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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28703040">I Do Not Recognize the Vessel, but the Eyes Seem So Familiar</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zooheaded/pseuds/Zooheaded'>Zooheaded</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Insert Boston Memes Here, M/M, Post Chapter 16: The Rescue, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Substance Abuse, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, Touch-Starved, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, author is commanded by a remorseless emperor, bad men behaving badly, more space nascar than was initially planned, post-season 2 finale, that's my emotional support mouse droid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 12:34:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>39,218</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28703040</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zooheaded/pseuds/Zooheaded</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone again, Din Djarin roams the galaxy, circling the planet Mandalore like water swirling down a drain. The blade of kings in his possession, and a hole punched in his heart.</p><p>Down on his luck and unable to face his past, Migs Mayfeld keeps moving in whatever direction takes him as far away from Burnin Konn and Operation: Cinder as he can get.</p><p>After everything, they find each other again without really meaning to, and form an unlikely partnership.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Din Djarin &amp; Migs Mayfeld, Din Djarin/Migs Mayfeld</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>262</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Unexpected Meetings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Obligatory massive spoilers for the majority and end of season 2.</p><p>Let’s pretend Bo-Katan didn’t immediately try to start some shit about the Darksaber three whole seconds after Skywalker catwalked out with Grogu and leaves Din alone for the time being lol. </p><p>I’m team “I didn’t really care about a Star War until The Mandalorian.” I’ve always enjoyed Star Wars, but it never quite delivered what I really craved, which was world exploration and small town problems. Jedi and Sith are cool and all, but I really just want bounty hunting, new friends who like to shoot people and blow shit up, and cantina brawls with cool aliens on strange worlds.</p><p>I’m actually more on team Din/Cobb tbh, but they’ve already been given the royal fanfiction treatment in every way possible. Din/Mayfeld fics just didn’t exist in the way I wanted them to, and the bitterness grew until I was compelled by an unseen hand to make my meager contribution.  </p><p>The amount of reading I had to do on Wookiepedia for this fic just to satisfy myself for some small details is borderline shameful, but probably doesn’t even break the surface of how deeply a more dedicated star wars fan might dive. Sorixin isn’t even a real city on Malastare but I had to make something up due to an unforseen lack of information. If there are any enormously huge errors in these details, please forgive me.</p><p>I know Mayfeld is an asshole, but he’s also very funny to me in his unrepentant assholery and utter lack of tact, so I hope that comes across well here. I imagine he’s taken this opportunity of a clean slate to get his shit together to the best of his ability. And as a New Englander myself, it’s nice to hear the familiar accent of a wretched Bostonian out in the black abyss of the galaxy, telling me I’m not far from home, and that there’s probably a Dunk’s nearby with its lights on for me.</p><p>Number of chapters may change, but I’m intending this to (hopefully) be more of a contained story. Perhaps when this is done I’ll finally be freed from my temporary possession.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>Freshly dissolved in some frozen devotion<br/>No more alone or myself could I be<br/>Looks like a strain to the arms it were open<br/>No shortage of sordid, no protest from me</em>
  </p>
  <p><em>- Angel </em><em>o</em><em>f Small Death </em><em>a</em><em>nd </em><em>t</em><em>he Codeine Scene</em>, Hozier</p>
</blockquote><p> </p><p>It wasn’t that Malastare was an ugly place, not exactly. A purple orb oscillating in a field of all encompassing blackness, but ever burning lights marking speeder racetracks crisscrossed over the planet like golden footprints left behind by some infinite holy visitor that never quite cared enough to stay.</p><p>There were little clusters of whiter lights on the surface, like impact craters left in ice and all the lingering cracks spreading out from their source in every direction as roads into tiny communities, then cool dark beyond them. Hubs of civilization connected to fuel refineries worth more than all the gambled credits from every podrace in history.</p><p>It wasn’t ugly, but it would be prettier to him if it were a wilder place, an untouched place, like so much of the galaxy wasn’t. As he descended into the atmosphere and passed through the low cloud ceiling, long thin rock formations came into view. Protruding from a ravaged, snowy wasteland, they gleamed in the glow of the planet’s two small orbiting moons like teeth from a gaping mouth. Among them were rusted and destroyed machines, left where they’d died, but too far away to truly identify what exactly they were. Remnants of a battle from years ago perhaps. The Clone Wars maybe, but Din was never sure.</p><p>Beyond, sweeps of frosted trees covered the landscape swaddled by soft dark and blanketed in snow. Here it was quiet, and for a moment, his ship passing over miles above like a dark cloud, he could pretend.</p><p>The comm speaker clicked on then, triggered by his descent, shattering the brief daydream. A perky spaceport droid ran through Malastare’s welcoming spiel, its list of planet-specific laws, racetrack hotels, and high rate eateries in the capitol of Pixelito. Din tuned most of it out, slowing his descent with an easy pull of the thrust reverser, waiting for the landing confirmation.</p><p>The SS-54 assault ship he currently piloted was no <em>Razor Crest</em>, but the shape of it was familiar enough, and it was old enough to have enough small problems to keep him busy. It was a rough, rattling beast of a craft and while a little smaller than his old ship, he liked that he could hide it a little better, and quickly zip away when he needed to. It was good to have something to busy his hands when the bounties would inevitably run low, and buying the old ship was one of the first things he did when he’d made it back to the familiar streets of Nevarro.</p><p>He’d decided to christen it <em>The Mudhorn, </em>if only to give himself something else to hold onto, or maybe to give Grogu an easy way to help identify him, even if something told him that the child would have little difficulty finding him when the time came. If it ever came at all.</p><p>
  <em>Their clan of two.</em>
</p><p>The thought of it made a sharp ache bloom in his chest like poking at an ugly wound. A stinging sensation spread over his eyes and he quickly squeezed them shut, imagining the ghost of tiny fingers brushing his bare cheek. The foreign feeling of that small touch had been absolutely electric, and Din found himself brushing his face with his own fingers for days and days after, attempting to recreate that feeling, but never quite being able to. It was different when it was someone else. It seemed he’d always known that, but he’d never really <em>known</em>.</p><p>Din almost didn’t know what to do with himself now. He had a new (to him at least) scrap heap of a ship filling his hours when previously caring for the child had consumed most of his waking moments. At first the amount of care the child demanded had irritated him, like taking care of an unruly pet he never wanted. A responsibility he felt needed to be fulfilled. Responsibility foisted upon him simply because there had been no other acceptable options. A responsibility that quickly became a test of learning and understanding, then amusement, companionship, attachment, joy, and finally he had begun to feel...</p><p>
  <em>Something.</em>
</p><p>Something that pulled a gentleness out of him that he thought he'd lost years ago. Lost and buried along with his parents in blackened crater holes of glassed sand. And now he’d sent that gentleness away willingly, because it had been the right thing to do. In this new unnamed thing his life had become there was no one to speak softly to anymore, so he didn’t speak much at all. There were only the sounds of his boots clanking through a cramped empty ship, the memory of the <em>Razor Crest’</em><em>s</em> interior made cavernous by comparison. Only him in his bed, not too dissimilar from the sad sleeping closet he was used to, the silence so loud it could almost be considered a companion. There was only the void of space stretching out for eons, and himself alone at the center, hurtling in his tin can through the yawning blackness.</p><p>Sometimes he thought it was a blessing, that his old ship had been turbolasered into a smoking black hole on the surface of Tython. On <em>The Mudhorn</em> there would be no small corners of familiarity to remind him of Grogu. No little bowl used for bathing a tiny wriggling body. No little stuffed toys half chewed on and left abandoned on the cold steel floors. No empty sleeping hammock swaying gently above his head.</p><p>Nothing left.</p><p>But if he had unscrewed the metal ball of <em> The Mudhorn’s </em> gear knob and replaced it with one from a different ship, nobody else had to know.</p><p>It was easier usually, not to think about Grogu at all, to stay busy, but Din had chosen the name almost against his own will, chosen it as easily as breathing. It would take time to refill the significant dent he’d put in his savings by purchasing it, but he had time, all the time in the galaxy.</p><p>
  <em>For now.</em>
</p><p>For now he saved money. He ate. He slept. He hunted. He didn't think about Grogu.</p><p>The Darksaber lay hidden in one of <em>The Mudhorn’s</em> storage compartments, and Din didn’t quite know what to do with it. Bo-Katan had let him walk away for the moment. Despite his attempts to give the weapon to her, she had refused because of tradition, leaving the prospect of a later fight hanging over his head. Din could understand tradition and all the rules that came with it, had lived by such rules for decades, but perhaps Bo-Katan hadn’t yet realized that he was defeated already. A clan of one wasn’t much good for anything, and he didn’t feel any sudden sweeping calls to become ruler of an entire world he’d never even seen.</p><p>Din didn’t know what he wanted right now, but he was at least certain he didn’t want <em>that</em>.</p><p>Bo-Katan and Koska had at least shown him that there were other ways a Mandalorian could live with honor, and his brief time spent with Boba-Fett had cemented it as <em>honorable</em> to the highest meaning of the word. It was through their example that he still felt worthy enough to keep the Beskar, but he still lived by his former creed to the best of his ability. It felt wrong to show his face anymore than he already had, wrong to have his armor removed for any significant length of time, the shape of it so familiar to him, the weight of it grounding and defining him as a Mandalorian. Decades of ingrained habit too much a part of him to completely unlearn.</p><p>Generations of Mandalorians before him cradled him in their hands, strengthening his shell and protecting what was within. It was all he had left to hold onto.</p><p>
  <em>After.</em>
</p><p>Din had begun separating events into <em>before</em> he had willfully broken the creed, and <em>after. </em>He had found, that while horribly frightening and utterly strange, it didn’t haunt him as much as he’d thought it would. It didn’t unmake him completely, spooling the core of his being out into nothingness like a cloud of jumbled debris sucked out an airlock into the vacuum of deep space.</p><p>He’d been nearly paralyzed at first, in that hellish mess hall on Morak. Barely able to string two words together as the curtain of gray shock had settled around him like a winding shroud, choking him mute on the spot. Din was almost embarrassed after it was all said and done with. Mayfeld must’ve thought he’d lost his mind.</p><p>But what he had done that day, he had done for Grogu, his <em>ad’ika</em>, and he had done it without a single regret. One day, Din would see him again and when that day came they would face each other without any Beskar between them.</p><p>
  <em>This was the way.</em>
</p><p>Perhaps if he could find the armorer again, find the strength to face her with what he had done and how he had changed, she could guide him one last time, divine his future from melted Beskar as a mystic might from a set of cards. If the Darksaber was the next step of his destiny, or something he should seek to lose as quickly as possible. Something told him he’d have to figure out this particular endeavor on his own.</p><p>When nests became empty or were destroyed, they had to be built anew.</p><p>The approval to land came eventually, an empty ship lot lighting up in the form of a green square far beneath him. As Din dipped back into the purpled clouds, snowflakes swelled up around him in an icy fog, washing across the transparisteel and making the small tourist town he was settling into something all together smaller.</p><p>Sorixin was a small city a few thousand hectares outside the known capitol of Pixelito, known more for its repulsorcraft repair shops, custom craft modifications, and illicit spice dens, then for its luxury race watching accommodations. It was quickly becoming the center of winter podracing on Malastare, and if the local weather forecast creeping across his HUD screen was any indication of the climate, it was definitely winter.</p><p>Perhaps it was just a less busy alternative to the capitol if one desired to waste a few credits cavorting with the locals, but Din was here on business, and it was easy to steer his thoughts back to the task at hand, filling the hollow, empty place in his chest with purpose.</p><p>It had been Boba Fett who had initially contacted Din about a little problem he wanted taken care of. The other Mandalorian was currently a little too busy on Tatooine to go off-world and deal with it himself. Cleaning up the Hutt’s palace and surrounding Hutt-Space was a full time job it seemed, even with Fennec at his side.</p><p>Din had been back on Nevarro at Fett’s first communication, preferring to remain close to his few friends for a time until he could figure out what his next step would be. He had quickly grown eager for a distraction (not to mention credits) and he’d jumped at Fett’s offer. The other Mandalorian had helped him in ways far beyond what Din had expected, and he wanted to repay that kindness any way that he could. He’d initially refused the offer of payment, but Fett had insisted, perhaps guessing he’d be needing to recoup his losses from acquiring a new ship.</p><p>Fett sent the details in an encoded message, and Din had loaded it onto an empty tracking fob. The bounty was a Nikto male named Noibbyl Choptu, a high profile weapons trafficker that used to work under Bib Fortuna during his brief control of Jabba’s Palace. Fett had initially offered Choptu a place at the palace in order to learn more about his trade routes and syndicate contacts, but he had refused, choosing instead to flee, indicating that he knew more about operations around the former Hutt stronghold than Fett was comfortable letting slip away.</p><p>Fett wanted Choptu alive first and foremost, but said that if he gave Din too much trouble or put his life in danger for any reason, than he would take his corpse or proof of his death for fifty percent. Din didn’t argue with his kindness, but remained determined to do the job he was hired to do to the best of his ability.</p><p>The other Mandalorian had also informed Din of the Nikto’s little gambling problem, narrowing down the worlds he might readily escape to significantly. Din’s quarry was initially seen on Canto Bight after fleeing Tatooine. Canto Bight was a melting pot, but Nikto tended to stand out in populations where other species dominated due to their distaste for races unlike their own. The gambling capitol of the galaxy was likely too high profile and perhaps a bit too obvious for someone who must have known he would be hunted.</p><p>It was only a matter of time before the Nikto ended up on Malastare, podracing being a big draw for gamblers, and Choptu being a known fan and frequent attendee at Tatooine’s various racing events. Even now in the planet’s winter, Malastare wanted to keep its flow of tourists willing to gamble their credits away as high as possible. Heavily modified snowcrafts joined the fleet of racing vehicles giving birth to winter podracing, and it quickly rose in popularity, drawing crowds of thousands to watch the dangerous sport, and there was a big night-racing event coming up in just a couple of days.</p><p>Din and Boba Fett agreed that if Noibbyl Choptu had another destination in mind, it would be here, either in the capitol or a smaller outlying town. The tracking fob confirmed their suspicions, beeping semi frequently in his hand. Choptu was on this planet somewhere.</p><p>Din tilted the navigator slightly to give the city below another sweep before landing, picking out small landmarks. There was a cantina not far from the spaceport, huddled in among the other buildings like an animal bedded down against the cold. He’d start his search there. A plan already taking shape in his mind, Din relaxed and eased his ship into the landing.</p><p>Against his better judgment, Din let his eyes wander to the dash screen where he received his holo messages, trying to will a new message to arrive. He checks the commbox no more and no less than three times a day. Often enough it was Greef or Cara, asking after him, sometimes Fett giving updates Din found interesting, but never the one message he hoped to see. He’s already checked it twice today, leaving just one more opportunity before he went to sleep that night.</p><p>It was good to keep discipline, even in routine. He never asked the name of the Jedi who took Grogu away from him, but felt that if they wanted to contact him, they would be able to without issue. He had found them in the first place hadn’t he?</p><p>But Din still checks. It had been six months already, a small eternity, each passing day slightly worse than the last, but he tried to remain hopeful.</p><p>Hoping against hope.</p><p>Din decides that when he finishes this job, he’ll reward himself by checking the commbox a fourth time.<br/><br/></p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>The rented snowspeeder cruises through the Sorixin Narrows easily, leaving a clean, blade-like slice in the fresh powder. The streets were lit mostly by neon lanterns and the occasional barrel fire. It may have been the home of the winter podracing league, but it was mostly comprised of run down speeder repair shops that probably doubled as spice dens when their owners decided they wanted easy credits. His helmet took the brunt of the snow and wind, but Din still squinted against the barrage, his HUD distorted from the swirling flakes. Luckily his navigator screen did most of the work for him and he just had to make sure he didn’t run anyone over.</p><p>It was quiet out, most residents darting to and from their destinations quickly. Dugs in warm looking clothing trudging through the snow with their unique gait, and other humanoid races rendered unidentifiable by their heavy cold weather gear.</p><p>The temperature readings on his HUD showed -3 standard. Not yet cold enough to tax his armor’s climate control much, but enough to let him know he shouldn’t stay in the elements for longer than necessary.</p><p>Eventually, he finds his way to the Sorixin Cantina and parks the speeder outside. The fob beeps slow and faint in his hand like some small tired animal. Choptu was not in this building certainly, maybe not even in this town, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t, or hadn’t already been.</p><p>Above him, an orange streetlight appears haloed by snow in its own soft glow. A snow globe of light. Somewhere in the faded icy distance an animal calls out dully, and there’s a distant tinny crash. Voices in the dark. The hum of vehicles moving by on distant streets. City sounds. Not wholly unpleasant, but not the quiet he desired.</p><p>Inside, the cantina is quiet, and Din shoulders by a dug on their way back out into the cold. Only a few patrons huddled into the selection of ample seating under orange and purple wall lights. The weather likely kept most in their homes, leaving not else but these odd worshipers, hoping the answer to their troubles would form at the bottom of an empty glass and be read like tea leaves.</p><p>It was of a similar layout to some cantinas Din had visited before, but had lower tables and thin, narrow shaped stools, presumably to cater to the resident Dugs, but also more familiar seating for other upright bipedals like himself. The space inside was divided down the center by a wall that bisected the backlit oval bar, splitting the cantina into two separate rooms. In the back were a handful of more private rooms where some low indecipherable conversation filtered out.</p><p>A Twi’lek barmaid smiled at him nervously from where she was polishing glasses. Her skin looked pale purple, but the lights made it hard to know for sure. He tilted his head at her in greeting and drifted closer to the bar, already thinking of the questions he would ask.</p><p>The once quiet conversation in the back transformed into heated words. Din recognized the language as Dug, and while very rusty, managed to pick up the gist of what was spoken.</p><p>“<em>You did not do what </em><em>I </em><em>asked! </em><em>What I paid for!</em><em>”</em></p><p>And then another voice answered in basic, “Yeah, I didn't because then I'd be out of a fucking <em>job</em>. They inspect vehicles now for League engineering guidelines and tampering, did you ever think of that?”</p><p>Din stopped where he was, comically frozen just steps away from the bar, drawing the bored, yet curious gaze of another Dug seated at a nearby table. The Twi’lek bartender tilted her head in amused confusion.</p><p>It couldn’t be, but he knew that sardonic voice anywhere… <em>Mayfeld?</em><br/><br/>Of all the cantinas in the galaxy the ex-con could have been in, it had to be <em>this</em> one. The man was supposed to be a ghost, and here he was, back to haunt him. What were the odds? It seemed impossible, like spinning sand into gold, but Din had been experienced an overwhelming number of impossible things lately.</p><p>Obvious to Din’s internal struggle, the argument continued unabated.<br/><br/>“<em>We were referred to you for your unique qualifications in this matter. You did not build what was paid for!”</em></p><p>“Oh, I built what you paid for, make no mistake about that, but I built it within the requirements and didn’t do any more than that. The league’s on thin ice with the Republic as it is.”</p><p>“<em>I </em><em>was assured that the modification</em><em>s</em><em> would be untraceable.”</em></p><p>“I don’t know who <em>assured</em> you of that, but it certainly wasn't me. If you’d have kriffin’ <em>listened</em> to me in the first place, you would know that I only deal in League approved modifications.”</p><p>“<em>I was told-”</em></p><p>“By who? Who the fuck told you? I'm trying to stay <em>out</em> of prison, kids. Not pod sled my ass right into it.”</p><p>“<em>Do you know who I am? I am K</em><em>eba </em><em>G</em><em>gaansase! </em><em>The best snowracer on Malastare!”</em><br/><br/>“Man, I don’t give a fuck who you are, blade throwers, flamethrowers, fog blasters <em>and</em> horn blasters, hoosker dos, hoosker dont's, peruvian mud slingers, dust devils, anti-flares, and whistling kitty chasers are <em>a</em><em>ll</em> banned by the league, and I don't make em for you, or anyone else on this frozen purple rock, and especially not for the same piddly handful of credits I'd piss out after an evening at the Cantina.”</p><p>Din had heard more than enough. He turned on his heel and started heading for the exit, ignoring the looks the bartender and few patrons were giving him. He already knew the bounty wasn’t here and that he could inquire elsewhere. He probably should’ve just started his search at the capitol, it would have been obvious after all. He didn’t need to see Mayfeld again, didn’t need to get involved in whatever the former mercenary had gotten himself into. He could fight his own battles and dig himself out of his own messes. Didn’t need anyone’s help, especially not the Mandalorian that put him in prison and nearly got him killed on Morak.</p><p>Din was aware that these were excuses, and he knew he was running, but he didn’t want to see him again. The only other living being in the galaxy that knew his face.</p><p>He didn’t want to deal with that right now. <em>Couldn’t.</em></p><p>But it seemed life had a way of deciding things for him, like spinning a wheel at a spacejacks table, the draw of a card. Happenstance. Random, dumb luck.</p><p>“<em>We’ll see about that! I want what was promised to me, and if I can’t have that, I’ll take my c</em><em>redits</em><em> back! Balgo!”</em><br/><br/>Mayfeld’s voice again, this time rising in panic. "Hey, hey, hey alright, hey <em>hey</em>, stop! Hey <em>stop</em>!" There was a scrabbling, clattering sound.<br/><em><br/></em>Din stopped again, hesitating. <em>Why was he hesitating?</em><br/><br/><em>"Shut up!"</em> A third deeper voice Din hadn’t heard before, a hard thumping crash, something breaking, then abruptly, silence.</p><p>
  <em>Kriff. </em>
</p><p>Din was turning around before he could think twice, blaster already in his hand.</p><p>The Twi’lek bartender gasped when she saw him, “Hey! You cant-” other patrons stood up, gaping at him, he ignored them all and charged forward.</p><p>Din’s booted foot went into the door, smashing the knob out, and splintering the frame. Another kick swung the whole thing inwards, revealing the scene within. Mayfeld was there, pushed down onto the center table by a big Houk who had the mercenary’s arm wrenched behind his back. Din couldn’t see his face, but his head was covered in blood and broken glass, the table’s glass surface cracked to pieces Beneath him. Din knew Mayfeld wasn’t dead, his HUD screen picking up his heartrate sitting around 120. <em>Panic.</em></p><p>A Dug in a colorful racing outfit stared back at him in shock.</p><p>“<em>B-</em><em>B</em><em>algo!”</em> The Dug shouted, panicked, pointing at him.</p><p>Din pointed his blaster at the Houk, “You must be Balgo.”</p><p>The hulking humanoid growled and squeezed, Din heard Mayfeld’s wrist snap in Balgo’s grip and the mercenary cried out. Din fired his blaster at the Houk’s head, dropping him like a stone.</p><p>The Dug ushered a slew of curses and fled, nearly tripping into the busted door in his panic to escape. Din followed him with his blaster, but ultimately let him leave the cantina.</p><p>Mayfeld groaned from where he was stirring on the busted table and Din helped him roll onto his side. "Can you get up?"<br/><br/>Blood coated the left side of his head and face, and he blinked up at Din uncomprehending. His eyes were a savage, icy blue.</p><p>“Hey, Mayfeld, you with me?” Din asks, curling a hand around the other man’s arm more firmly.</p><p>"Brown eyes?" Mayfeld says with a dazed half smile, reaching up to touch the side of the helmet gently. Din's breath catches and he goes still, “you here to kill me?”</p><p>Din can’t speak, but Mayfeld blinks rapidly, and seems to come back to himself, he squeezes his eyes shut and groans, wincing and cursing as he bends his wrist the wrong way.</p><p>“Mando? What are you doing here?” he asks.</p><p>Din carefully helps him sit up so that he’s perched on the table’s edge, feet brushing the floor. “I could ask you the same thing.” Din says. Mayfeld looks much the same as he did the last time Din had seen him, dressed all in shades of slate grey and black, a scarf around his neck and a smattering of red beard growth on his face.</p><p>“I live-” Mayfeld wobbled, and Din tightened his hold, waiting for him to balance on his feet, “-<em>and</em> work on this frozen dump.”</p><p>“I’m looking for a bounty.”</p><p>“What the fuck happened?” Mayfeld asks suddenly, as though waking from a dream.</p><p>Din frowned, not that Mayfeld could see it, “There was a Dug-”</p><p>Mayfeld squeezed his eyes shut, furious, "Agh, <em>Keba</em>, that mother kriffing- dumb fucking- druk sucking-”<br/><br/>"He got away." Din said lamely.<br/><br/>"I'm gonna blow his fucking head off." Mayfeld answered breathlessly, tipping his head back and closing his eyes briefly. He absently reached up and brushed broken glass off the side of his head, then observed the dead Houk on the floor with relative disinterest.</p><p>“Big dumb, sonofbitch...”<br/><br/>Between the two of them they got Mayfeld standing, right before he immediately hunches over and vomits onto his own boots.</p><p>“I’m gonna take you to a Medcenter.” Din says quietly, hardly able to believe this is where he’s ended up. “I think you might have a concussion.”</p><p>Mayfeld grabs for Din’s arm and slowly pulls himself back upright, holding his head. His face has gone as white as the snow outside waiting for them, his heartbeat staying up in the midrange of general unease. In fact he looked rather miserable, his white face verging towards green. Din thinks the likelihood of him being sick again very high, and the likelihood of him being sick again over the back of Din’s Beskar and the cheap speeder bike he’d rented, astronomical.</p><p>Mayfeld swallows, “Terrific.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Sidetracked</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the end, Din had carried Mayfeld bodily into the medcenter, dryheaving and miserable. A Dug nurse with a surprisingly kind face along with a medical droid took him off Din’s hands, leaving the Mandalorian standing awkwardly in themiddle of the empty waiting room.</p><p>The harsh lights in the ceiling flickered slightly in thatuncomfortable way that cheap lighting often did. It would have been a good time to leave, and logically, Din had no real reason to stay. He’d saved Mayfeld’s life and delivered him to a facility that would ensure that he would continue living. He didn’t need to stay here a moment longer, but stay he did, slumping into a too-small seat and letting the weight of his reality settle around him, the encounter replaying over and over again in his mind’s eye like a busted holodrama.</p><p>A pale hand on his helmet, as penetrating a touch as if it had been his actual flesh and blood face, and blue eyes looking directly through his t-visor into his own brown ones.</p><p>
  <em>Brown eyes. </em>
</p><p>Din refused to be affected by this. This haphazard meeting.</p><p>After another long stretch of quiet minutes, Din had halfway convinced himself that he could stand up and leave right now, Mayfeld might not even remember seeing him after having his head put through a glass table. Din could take his rented speeder bike back to the spaceport, and his ship, and leave this frozen town for the capitol of Pixelito as he should have done in the first place. He’d likely find his quarry without much difficulty, and then he could put this whole planet behind his engine nozzles and into the backwaters of his memory.</p><p>He’s aware he’s making excuses, and sitting there, under the cheap lights in that small waiting room, he feels like a coward. Leaving now would make him even more of one.</p><p>Din doesn’t know how much time has passed when the medical droid wheels back into the waiting area, waving its multiple arms and various appendages in a vaguely unsettling manner. Droids were alright, Din had come to settle on this over the past several months, but medical droids were somehow less tolerable with all the connotations involved. He stood up when it addressed him, his hand already hovering above the blaster at his hip more out of sheer habit than anything else.<br/><br/><em>“Are you taking custody of Mr. Hist Chreswi?”</em><br/><br/>The droid had an oddly smooth voice that was probably meant to be comforting, but it had decidedly missed its mark. Din tilted his head, thinking maybe he’d misheard, "Who?"<br/><br/><em>“Mr. </em><em>Hist </em><em>Chreswi has a concussion and requires monitoring </em><em>for a minimum of twenty four hours</em><em>. Are you taking custody of Mr. Hist Chreswi?”</em><br/><br/><em>Ah.</em></p><p>"Uh, yeah, yes." Din says without really thinking about it, anything to get out of here and get back to—</p><p>“Is this all I get? A band-aid and a pamphlet?” Mayfeld’s voice is just behind the droid, sounding more coherent then he’d been on the speeder ride over here. A cocktail of painkillers and a bacta-patch could do wonders.</p><p>“<em>Questions are a good sign, Mr. Hist Chreswi is free to go. Your account will be debited.”</em></p><p>“Wow, ok, <em>great</em>.”</p><p>When he comes into view, Mayfeld looks terrible. Half of his head is scraped red with a bruise already purpling beneath a simple white square of bandage covering the worst of it, and the white of his eye on the same side has gone red from a burst blood vessel. His face is curled up in tired irritation, an expression that seemed to come over him easily and often. The parts of his face that weren’t scraped bloody were so pale they appeared almost a sickly green from the unforgiving ice-white lights in the ceiling. His right arm was bound to the elbow in an opaque plastocast the color of watery frozen milk, and supported by a slate-blue sling.</p><p>Injuries he would not have had, if Din had been less of a coward and intervened sooner, when he knew he should have. The guilt settled into his gut like a chunk of lead.</p><p>When Mayfeld sees Din standing in the waiting room, his eyes flicker over the whole of him in several sweeping motions, his face somewhere between disbelief and real fear before he averts his eyes and his face washes back into that irritable, tired, suspicious look.</p><p>It had never bothered Din before, Mayfeld being afraid of him. He could always tell when people were afraid because the readings on his HUD never lied, even if the people themselves did. In their previous two encounters it had helped Din tolerate the merc’s more acerbic comments, knowing he was acting out to hide his discomfort.</p><p>It hadn’t bothered him before, but it does now.</p><p>"Well that was fun." The ex-imp’s tone heavily implying it was anything but, “You gonna write me a note so I don’t have to go to school tomorrow?”</p><p>Din sighs and inclines his head, “Something like that.”</p><p>“Whatever gets me the <em>fuck</em> out of here.” Mayfeld says acidly.</p><p>Din helps Mayfeld shuffle out of the building, white-faced and limping, and into the stinging cold where he starts shivering right away. He hunches into his coat and pulls his grey scarf tighter around his head with his good hand, the effort appearing to exhaust and frustrate him.</p><p>“You know, the healthcare on this planet leaves a lot to be desired.” He remarks almost conversationally. Above them, white snow swirls out of a purple sky. “Can’t believe I get to pay for this shit.”</p><p>“You ok?” Din asks. Not that he really needs to know but—</p><p>“Yeah, getting glass picked out of my skull has always been my idea of a good time.” Mayfeld says dismissively, then licks his dry lips, sighing, “I feel like my head’s gonna explode, but I guess I’m not gonna die.” He doesn’t look at Din, instead looking at something past his left shoulder when he asks “what the hell are you doing here Mando?”</p><p>“Told you. I’m here looking for a bounty.” Din says.</p><p>“Hey, I barely remember the speeder ride over here, ok? Cut me some slack.” Mayfeld says, his face half smiling, but it looks forced, then the smile melts into terror so fast Din almost steps towards him, thinking something is wrong, “Fuck, am <em>I </em>the bounty?”</p><p>“No,” Din says quickly, “You’re not on anyone’s radar. It’s a Nikto that fled Tatooine,” and Mayfeld sags in relief, breath puffing out in a large cloud.</p><p>“Just by chance then?” he asks.</p><p>“Yeah.” Din says.</p><p>The ex-merc chuckles then, a single exhalation of mirth that looks like it hurts his face, “Maybe I should put some credits down on the next Night Race, if my luck’s gonna be like this.”</p><p>“Not what I’d call lucky.” Din says, watching him shiver in the cold with a busted wrist and a head injury.</p><p>“Yeah, well, I’d probably be looking at the inside of a bacta-tank if you hadn’t shown up, or cooling in the dumpster behind the can’.” Mayfeld says humorlessly, and kicks at the snow piling up on the ground. He never really quite <em>looks</em> at Din, at least not like he did before, his eyes always moving to different points on his helmet and the ground. “So, thanks for that.”</p><p>It’s the first reasonably sincere thing he’s said since since their initial meeting in the cantina, and Din feels a bit of that guilt again, feels like an intruder into Mayfeld’s life, and he feels…</p><p>
  <em>You did what you had to do. I never saw your face.</em>
</p><p>He feels.</p><p>“Do you live around here?” Din asks.</p><p>And that careful suspicion is back, that wariness that came from a lifetime of always looking over your shoulder. "Yeah, not far, why?”</p><p>“I’ll give you a ride home.” Din had already decided he would, despite the beeping tracker reminding him he didn’t really have the time for a social call, but not liking the idea of leaving Mayfeld here with injuries he shouldn’t have had, to trudge back to wherever he resided through the snow and the cold like a wounded animal retreating back into an empty den.</p><p>“’preciate it Mando.” Mayfeld says awkwardly, clearly not expecting the offer, and climbs gingerly onto the back of the speeder.</p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>Apparently, a combination of painkillers and what Din could only guess was fading adrenaline, made Mayfeld <em>very</em> talkative:</p><p>“Yeah, I been here about five months or so, picking up odd jobs here and there before I fell into something more permanent.” Mayfeld explains, talking loudly to be heard over the wind and the speeder motor, one polite inquiry from Din triggering an unending stream from the ex-imp, like he hasn’t spoken to anyone at length in months.</p><p><em>Maybe he hasn’t</em>, Din thinks, <em>or maybe he just likes to talk</em>, but Din had already known that to be a fact.</p><p>“You make speeder modifications?” Din asks, partly out of politeness, but partly out of interest too. There were very few people he ran into more than once, let alone three times, the third being after they were listed as dead.</p><p>Din could feel him lean in, “Guessing you put two and two together in the cantina.”</p><p>“I did overhear some, you mentioned League approved mods” Din says.</p><p>“I build things sometimes on commission, when people want them built.” Mayfeld says, but doesn’t elaborate.</p><p>“People like Keba?” Din asks.</p><p>Mayfeld scoffed, “Yeah, though usually I don’t get my head smashed in due to miscommunication of a deal. That asshole just doesn’t like to listen. Most of those guys don’t, once they make it big. They think everybody will just roll over for them.”</p><p>If Din thought the streets were empty before, they were absolutely barren now that the evening was getting on. The only signs of any habitation were race posters pinned to light posts, flapping in the wind.</p><p>Mayfeld was using Din to shield himself from the worst of the wind, huddled close to his back, squirming and re-adjusting himself on the narrow seat, and Din was very acutely aware of his proximity, the heat of him felt even through the Beskar.</p><p>“Ex-imperial sharpshooter, ex-mercenary, it’s not like I didn’t <em>know</em> I was gonna be in trouble.” Mayfeld says, maybe because he feels he needs to explain himself to Din, or maybe because his pride was wounded, maybe both. “He asked to talk to me on my night off, caught me off guard. I could have done something ahead of time, to avoid that situation, but I didn’t.” He sounds angry, but Din can’t see his face to confirm this, “big fucking joke, right?”</p><p>“You were trying to keep a low profile.” Din says, and he’s not exactly sure why he does, maybe he just didn’t want Mayfeld to eat himself up over something that could have happened to anybody. “Sometimes trouble finds you, even if you’re doing your best to avoid it.”</p><p>“Guess I just never figured out how to keep my mouth shut.” Mayfeld says, quieter now, but Din can still hear him just fine, and he keeps on talking before Din can even think of a response. “I usually put in hours at some of the speeder mechanic shops around town, teach shooting on the side, marksmanship stuff, and generally mind my own fucking business.”</p><p>Din found it hard to imagine Mayfeld teaching anyone anything, but he remembered the ex-merc had been reasonably patient enough to explain the prison-break job to Din, back in that debacle with Ranzar Malk. Patient enough to make sure Din understood the ins and outs, even if he’d skipped over the finer points of betrayal.</p><p>“Not too different from the chop fields.” Din had meant it as a joke, but it didn’t come out the way he’d intended.</p><p>“It’s different when you’re getting <em>paid </em>to do it as opposed to forced prison labor, wiseass.”</p><p>They pass a trio of individuals, standing around a fire that had been set in an emptied fuel barrel. When the figures looked up to watch them go by, their eyes glowed like embers in the dark. Strung up above, small purple flags snapped in the cold wind, following them in a long line down the powerlines, until they too disappeared, the street growing dark ahead of them. Din can’t help but think of the hollow eyed gazes of the villagers on Morak.</p><p>Din thinks about Balgo, wonders if he had even liked being a hired bruiser for an undoubtedly spoiled celebrity racing Dug. Knowing Houks, he probably did. At least he died doing what he probably enjoyed the most: assaulting someone who was smaller and weaker than he was.</p><p>“Do you like it?” Din asked, like that was important somehow. Maybe it was. Din tried to imagine making a life here, a place where humans didn’t often visit. Perhaps Mayfeld just didn’t want to be found, but when you died you were supposed to enjoy the afterlife, weren’t you?</p><p>Mayfeld’s quiet for a minute, maybe he hadn’t considered the question before, “It’s alright,” he says, “puts food on the table, and I can afford stellar health care like bacta patches and boo-boo kisses.”</p><p>“Could be worse.”</p><p>“Kriffin’ right, and it’s Hist by the way, I’m sure the med droid told you, Hist Chreswi.”</p><p>Din had all but forgotten the name he’d been told in the cold waiting room, still thinking of him as Migs Mayfeld, but it made sense that a new life would require a new name to complete it.</p><p>“Hist.” Din says aloud, testing it and committing it to memory.</p><p>“Yeah. My nickname in the service. Everyone who knew it is dead so I figured I could use it again.” May- <em>Hist</em> said, answering a question Din hadn’t even thought to ask. He thought about how people lived or died, seemingly by chance alone. How chance meetings and chance events could figure so largely in their lives.</p><p>“Hated my fucking name anyway.” Hist added.</p><p>He didn’t sound quite so animated now, and Din wondered if the events of the evening were catching up with him. At the very least he must’ve been cold, even with his heavy winter gear. It could have been the bad turn of the conversation, or a combination of all three. Din could imagine the look on his face, had seen it first-hand in a mess hall on Morak, forced to face down a heartless imperial monster because of Din’s inability to string a coherent sentence together.</p><p>Another casualty of a cursed empire.</p><p>Din wondered if Hist had any family left alive that would have mourned his death, if they even heard he had “died.” He thought it unlikely.</p><p>“My name is Din.” Din said suddenly, thinking that maybe Hist should be allowed to know this too, since he’d also <em>seen— </em></p><p>“Din? You mean ‘Din,’ like a lot of loud noise? What kind of name is that?” Hist said in that acerbic, unthinking way he made most of his off-hand comments, and it rankled, because Din didn’t give his name out lightly.</p><p>“It’s a name. The same kind of name as <em>Migs</em>.” Din shot back, already regretting his impulsive choice. This small gesture that weighed more than any ex-imp had the right to carry.</p><p>Hist glowered, Din couldn’t see it, but he could feel it, “Only my mom ever called me ‘Migs.’ It sounds like a bug or skin parasite you could get or something, I don’t know what she was thinking. Din’s a better name.”</p><p>“Din Djarin.” Din said, because he’d already gone this far, might as well go all the way.</p><p>“Din Djarin.” Hist echoed, trying it out. Then he was quiet for a time. Din thought about the tracking fob, blinking dully in the pocket of his armor like a second heartbeat, reminding him he’d come to this planet with a job to do and he was here, trying to make nice with a dead man.</p><p>“Bang a left here.” Hist said, and Din turned the speeder down a narrow street filled with squat, one level houses, all with small inset doors that could only by opened with keycodes. The snow piled in drifts between them, but Din guessed it probably helped with the insulation. There wasn’t much exterior light, and it didn’t look like the most savory part of town, but anyplace could be a home if it kept you safe.</p><p>“Hey Din?” His tone was different now, like he was about to ask something he didn’t necessarily want to ask, and Din felt the way things had changed suddenly, tension filling the air.</p><p>It felt strangely exhilarating to hear Hist say his name aloud. “Yeah?”</p><p>“That thing with Moff Gideon.” Din stiffened, surely Hist must have felt it, huddled behind him as he was, “Everybody heard about him getting captured, rumors how it happened and shit all over the Holonet, and I couldn’t help but notice... Did you get your kid back?”</p><p>And that was the question he’d been sitting on wasn’t it? Din had assumed Hist hadn’t cared one way or the other, expected him to ask almost first thing if he was going to ask at all, but he’d waited, like he’d been testing the waters, waiting for Din to tell him when it was safe to ask.</p><p>
  <em>Your kid.</em>
</p><p>But it wasn’t safe. Wouldn’t ever be something he could talk about, at least not now. It felt like salt on a wound, lighting the pain up again, like he’d accidentally crossed the wrong wires and gotten a shock up his arm for his trouble. The sudden wave of it closed his throat and he wanted to vanish right on the spot. <em>His child.</em> Just weeks ago he’d been heating a dinner ration for Grogu about this time, watching him eat, warming water for a bath and getting him ready to sleep. A routine that Din had come to realize had been good for him too. Something more to his life than just checking ship system switches and cleaning his beskar’gam.</p><p>Learning to look after someone, in turn, learning to look after himself.</p><p>He wanted to be back on his ship, he wanted to check the commbox again, he didn’t want to be on this frozen planet, out in a narrow alleyway in the snow and cold with someone who likely felt little more than fear, distrust and only the barest dangling shreds of camaraderie towards him. He wanted to be with Grogu, wherever he was, but he couldn’t, couldn’t have any of those things, and it felt like being swallowed up by snow. Numbing. <em>Suffocating.</em></p><p>“Sorry.” Hist said quietly, in that quick, forced way that says apologizing was not something he did often, and Din pulls himself out of his own spiral, realizing he must have gone quiet long enough to make the other man nervous. Nervous enough to stumble over an apology, whatever he felt towards Din. “Hey, I’m sorry I asked. I know I talk a lot, and if you don’t want—”</p><p>“It’s fine.” Din says, cutting off the next rambling apology, “Kid’s ok, I fulfilled my mission. I gave him to his people so he could train.” It was something similar to what he’d often told himself, in that gaping quiet after. A hard won success he was supposed to be proud of, something that shouldn’t have felt so acutely like a loss that left behind a quiet so vast and all encompassing it might just swallow him whole. Sometimes he wished it would.</p><p>Din could feel the curiosity building in the man behind him like a storm, feel the conversation turning toward something he tried hard not to think about. “More green guys like him? And Train? Train what?” Hist asked, apparently too many questions forming for him to stick with just one.</p><p>“Train with a Jedi, to develop his powers.” Din elaborated, immediately wishing he hadn’t. “Grogu wanted to.”</p><p>“Grogu?” Hist shifted in the speeder seat again and leaned in closer to the back of Din’s head, “Hold on, you’re telling me that little kid had magic fucking powers and you gave him to a <em>Jedi</em>? I thought Jedi’s weren’t even real.”</p><p>“I thought the same thing.” Din said, “guess we were both wrong.”</p><p>Hist didn’t seem satisfied with Din’s attempts to end the conversation, because he was a man who would never be satisfied with short answers, and would keep digging like he was out in a desert looking for water. Would dig until he hit bedrock. “So, what? You give him to a Jedi and you don’t get to see him again?”</p><p>“I don’t know.” Din said, that tight feeling crawling into his throat again.</p><p>“I thought he was your kid.”</p><p>“Not mine.”</p><p>Din didn’t want to talk about this now.</p><p>“But you did all that shit to get him back, took your Mando helmet off and— ”</p><p>“Hist.”</p><p><em>Couldn’t</em> talk about this now.</p><p>“Look, I’m just saying that you should be <em>able— </em>”</p><p>
  <em>Would not.</em>
</p><p>"<em>Hist.</em>”</p><p>“Fuck, fine, sorry, just think it’s not fair is all.”</p><p>Maybe it wasn’t, but Din couldn’t reckon with any of it now. Couldn’t think about why Migs, <em>Hist</em>, would suddenly care about what was fair to Din. He wanted to separate himself from this person who couldn’t help but pick at a wound until it broke open, bleeding hot and fast. Maybe it was unintentional but Din didn’t want any part of it. Certainly didn’t need it.</p><p>“Where’s your house?” Din asked, that swelling tide of emotions rising up around him. He needed this to be over.</p><p>“It’s not far.”</p><p>There was no more conversation after that.</p><p>=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>“Take your next right, that’s my street.”</p><p>“Alright.” Din sighs, wondering just how far someone can live from a cantina and a medcenter anyway. Each narrow, unlit street looked much like the last and they hadn’t seen a single other living thing in quite a while.</p><p>“Fuck, I’m gonna puke.”</p><p>Hist sounds terrible, whatever drug combo they gave him at the medcenter must’ve been wearing off. Din had come this far without being thrown-up on, he hoped his good fortune would last the rest of the ride.</p><p>“Do you want me to pull over?”</p><p>Din could hear him audibly swallowing, “No, almost there, it’s right here on the left it’s...” Hist trailed off and as Din slowed the speeder bike’s approach, it quickly became apparent why: there were objects scattered in the street, already becoming partially hidden under the light snowfall.</p><p>“Are you fucking kidding me...?”</p><p>Dark smoke drifted out of a hole in the squat building’s roof and as they reached where the front door should have been, it was blown wide open, either from blaster fire, or some small-time explosive. Either way, it was busted beyond repair.</p><p>“Are you <em>FUCKING</em> kidding me?!” Hist roars and Din feels him scramble off the back of the speeder before he can stop him. Hist skids in the snow, unsteady on his feet, and nearly falls if not for Din’s quick grab at his elbow. He stumbles back against the parked bike and starts coughing, bent over double with his hands on his knees. Eventually he heaves up bright yellow bile into the snow.</p><p>“Dank <em>farrik</em>.” Hist curses, and when he finally rises he’s gone shaky and looks sick right down to his core.</p><p>Din releases his arm and dismounts, guiding Hist to sit back down in the speeder seat. He was clearly struggling to hold back another surge of misery, shivering in the seat, he drops his head into his one good hand, the other arm held tight to his gut, breathing hard. The helmet’s HUD picked up that quick hear rate again, and Din wondered if his nerves were always so up and down. His bloodshot eye looked strange and unsettling in the low light, against the paper-white of his face.</p><p>“Stay put.” Din says, no,<em> orders</em>. If there was anyone still inside, being injured made him a liability. It wouldn’t be good for him to be out in the cold much longer, Din hoped the damage to his home was just superficial. Hoped the situation wasn’t spiraling out of his control into something more complex, something he wouldn’t be able to help involving himself in. Like it always seemed to.</p><p>Din’s HUD picks up on and illuminates prints already beginning to be filled in by the snow. Large finger marks and palm prints could only point to one species, the most common on Malastare.</p><p>“These tracks are Dug.” Din informs his shivering companion.</p><p>“I bet it was Keba, that shrivel-legged fuck.” Hist says from the speeder seat, eyes squeezed shut. Din was inclined to agree with him.</p><p>“Think he rigged the place?”</p><p>“Probably just came looking for his credits, but I don’t just leave credits lying around, so I doubt he got much, that sleemo bantha fucker.” Hist says, “Go on,” he motions for Din to check inside, “make yourself at home, I’ll put the caf on.” he adds bitterly.</p><p>Din peers inside the darkened building, tries to flip a lightswitch just inside the doorway and gets nothing for his trouble. Something beeps steadily from within the darkened recesses of the house. Din’s HUD switches over to nightvis when he steps inside. It was small, just three rooms in open-concept that Din could see, not including a ‘fresher. What few possessions Hist had were scattered about or smashed. Through a smoking hole in the ceiling, snow was softly falling, piling in a small heap on the floor. Din could make out some kind of heater in the center of the room that had been tipped onto its side, the hot contents smoldering and smoking, the vent column having collapsed onto the floor. This accounted for the hole in the ceiling, and it was a wonder the place hadn’t caught fire.</p><p>It didn’t look promising as far as still being viable as a living space, at least not without a lot of time and work to get it back into working order. Din knew that the ex-merc needed to get warm as soon as possible, and if Din’s past experience with head injuries was anything to go by, he also needed sleep.</p><p>Din steps back into the street, “It doesn’t look good.” he says.</p><p>Hist squeezes his eyes shut and slowly tips his head back, snowflakes gathering on his ginger eyebrows and the spread of his eyelashes. “I was gonna go home, eat a cheap dinner, and watch an even cheaper holo vid,” he says to the unfeeling purple sky above him, “maybe jerk off and go to bed.”</p><p>Din just stares at him.<br/><br/>He tips his head back down, and cracks his red-rimmed eyes open, looking hollowed clean out. “But I got my wrist busted, my head smashed in, and my house fucking cremated. That's great. Real fucking good.” he says, and he’s nodding, smiling, but it’s the same sort of smile he’d worn on his face when he’d had to listen to that scum of an imp spewing bile right in his face. A smile slapped over a swell of pain. “Love that for me.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.” Din says, knowing it’s inadequate.</p><p>“Yeah, well, shit happens.” He doesn’t sound angry or sad, just tired, bone deep exhaustion etched into every part of him. Din could imagine how he felt, knew first-hand how it felt to see the <em>Razor Crest</em> destroyed in an instant. All of his possessions, much of his savings, his weapons, his protection, his home, everything he had spent years slowly acquiring. Everything he had ever given Grogu, every reminder of his presence in Din’s life that had made him real, and not just a months long dream he’d been floating through. It felt like being untethered. It felt like being left to die.</p><p>“Funny how you’re always here.” Hist says, quieter now.</p><p>"What?” Din asks, not quite understanding.</p><p>Hist looks at him, his expression flickering again, but his eyes slide away, landing on the wreck of his house, “Every time I have a real bad fucking day.”</p><p>Din doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing.</p><p>He was supposed to be more than he’d been before. He was supposed to be helping people now. Grogu had woken that inside him, that he was supposed to be kind at every opportunity, because the galaxy was so often a brutal, unfair, and unkind place. It was the very least he could do, the absolute bare minimum. Hist had quietly slid into that gray indeterminate space between enemy and friend, and Din knew down to his core that he deserved to be helped. He deserved to have someone be kind to him.<br/><br/>“Anything you want me to find?” Din asks.<br/><br/>A collection of expressions flickered over his face, none of which Din can name, before he’d settled on ‘tired confusion,’ his brow furrowing, “Huh?”</p><p>“Stay on my ship for a bit.” Din says, already compiling a list in his head of things Hist might need. The decision having been made in the back of his head minutes ago, probably already made when he’d seen the blown in door of the sad hovel they’d been referring to as a house. “You need to get warm. Stay and... we’ll figure something out later.”</p><p>He wasn’t sure when it became ‘we,’ but Din wasn’t gonna question that either.<br/><br/>Hist’s mouth opens and closes, and he touches the side of his head again, the side that hurts, and he blinks rapidly, as though thinking was very difficult, and with the concussion, Din guesses it probably is.<br/><br/>“O-ok, ok.” He says, suddenly quiet, almost shy, clenching and unclenching his pale hands nervously. Din watches the heart rate meter tick up again, but not into the range of panic or fear. Just nerves?</p><p>“Hey, why are you helping me?”</p><p>“I wouldn't have been able to save Grogu without your help, and... you got me out of a bad situation. Figured I'd return the favor.” It seemed simple enough to Din, and easy answer to a hard question, but Hist doesn’t seem to like that answer, his eyes getting that suspicious glint. “What do you want from me?”</p><p>This threw Din for a loop. “Why do you think I want something?”</p><p>“Everybody wants something,” he shrugs one shoulder and doesn’t look at him, “and I know I’m not exactly your favorite person in the galaxy.”</p><p>“You’re alright.” Din says.</p><p>Hist blinks rapidly, if he’s surprised, he doesn’t let it show, but Din does see his ears turn bright red from where they peek through his scarf, “Ok, ok,” he says,as if convincing himself of something, “Ok, I want my guns, though they're probably all fucking gone.” he closes his eyes and holds a hand to his head, concentrating, “I need clothes, my datapad, the toolbox from under my bed, and... my droid.”<br/><br/>Din blinks, and leans forward minutely, not that Hist can see his surprise but— “A <em>droid</em>?”<br/><br/>“Yeah that’s right, my droid, a mouse droid. My pet project.” Hist says, His ears remained red, and what Din could see of his face had gone bright red as well. Despite had bad he must be feeling, it wasn’t enough to keep him from being embarrassed. He glares at Din as though daring him to say another word about it.</p><p>Din does anyway, unable to help himself. “Thought you didn't have the patience for pets.”<br/><br/>“And I thought you used to be a lot better at minding your own fucking business. You gonna pick my shit up or what?” Hist shot back.</p><p>“Fine.”</p><p>"Oh also in the ‘fresher, there's medication." He says this like it’s an afterthought, but he sounds more wary of speaking about this than he did for apet droid.<br/><br/>Din looks at him, "Medication?"<br/><br/>Hist just stares at him like Din’s a special kind of idiot, "Yes, <em>medication.</em> I'm turning my life around and getting my shit together and sometimes that ends in taking medication."<br/><br/>"What's it for?"</p><p>Hist hunches his shoulders, curling inward, clearly unwilling to say any more about it. “Kriff, you always this nosy?”<br/><br/>“I'm asking so I recognize it.”<br/><br/>“Just take whatever's left in <em>there</em> and bring it out <em>here</em>. It's probably fucking gone anyway— <em>Ah</em>!” Hist exclaims, a hand flying to his head, breathing hard. Cold always makes pain worse. Din switches over to thermal imaging, noting the red heat over the head injury, and the disconcerting yellow-green of every inch of exposed skin. He was getting cold. Din needed to hurry. No more dawdling.</p><p>“Alright, just take it easy.” Din says, not wanting him to hurt himself any worse than he already was.</p><p>“You’re really starting to test me here, <em>Din</em>.” Hist snaps, his teeth clenched around every word.</p><p>That made two of them.</p><p>“You’re really starting to test me here, Din.” Hist snaps, his teeth clenched around every word.</p><p>That made two of them.</p><p>Din flicked his helmet’s light on and stepped back inside the ruined structure, picking through the wreckage. It looked like a herd of banthas had torn through the place, or one very pissed off Dug. Din found an empty imperial issue service bag in the closet and opens it up. He grabs clothes off the floor and out of a small chest of drawers, throwing them inside.</p><p>Tools were scattered everywhere, and Din picks up everything he can lay his hands on, as quickly as he can, tossing them into the bag as well. Two cheap sporting blasters, half taken apart and clearly in need of some work lay untouched on a table along with an E-11 blaster rifle and a switched off datapad, and he bags those too. It seems whatever the Dug was after, it wasn’t firearms. Din gets to the bed and strips off the top blanket, folding it under his arm, thinking Hist could make use of it sooner rather than later.</p><p>Under the bed was the aforementioned toolbox, completely untouched, and Din grabs it. Behind the toolbox lay a stripped down sniper blaster rifle, and Din slides that into the duffelbag as well. He doesn’t see any sign of a mouse droid, and wonders if perhaps it was broken during the break in, or possibly stolen.</p><p>In the fresher, Din pops open the med cabinet behind a cracked mirror, light briefly reflecting back into his face and whiting out his HUD display, and finds… nothing at all. He hopes the medication isn’t too important, but if Hist had thought it necessary to mention it to someone he barely knew, it probably was. He’d have to ask about it later, to figure out how imperative it was to get more, and if he could go without it for any significant length of time, but for now he wouldn’t pry. It seemed a sensitive subject.</p><p>Something thuds into his boot from behind the toilet, and Din’s already pointing a blaster at the source before he hears the strange buzzing timbre of beeps that all MSE droids seem to make.</p><p>“Kriff.” He holsters his blaster.</p><p>The droid thumps into his boot again, almost like it’s trying to attack, and Din picks it up with one hand before it can spin away from him, and it squeals, frightened, wheels spinning frantically. There’s a dent in the side, and Din has no idea if it was new or had always been there, but it looks like it could have been made by a swift, well-placed kick. Din tucks the squealing droid under his arm and sighs, tries and fails to not be annoyed.</p><p>“Stop. I’m not going to hurt you. Hist is right outside.” he says, and the droid stops its squealing right away, going into a series of sad sounding beeps.</p><p>
  <em>Droids.</em>
</p><p>As an afterthought, Din manages to fit the bed pillow into the service bag as well before zipping it closed. Hist would probably appreciate having more of his own things, if he was going to stay for any length of time. Din doesn’t let himself think too hard about any of it, reasoning that he was doing a good thing, and that Hist needed his help.</p><p>He’d think on it later, when the other man was warm and safe.</p><p>Shouldering the service bag and holding the toolbox in his free hand, Din steps back outside into the cold wind. Under his arm the MSE droid squeals, clearly having spotted its master.</p><p>“Hey, chill out E91, I’m right here...” Hist sounds tired, and Din drops the droid, spinning wheels and all, into his outstretched waiting hand before he unfolds the blanket and throws it around him. Hist mutters his thanks, and curls into it.</p><p>“Found a few blasters and rifles, I don’t think there was much else.” Din explains, “Meds were gone.” and Hist nods like he was expecting that. Din guessed painkillers or something that could be used recreationally, something that could be re-sold for easy credits.</p><p>“Thanks for getting everything.” Hist says and his words are slurred, he didn’t sound good. He inspects his little droid while Din loads the bag onto the back of the speeder.</p><p>“Did that scum sucker kick you?” Hist asks it, to which it trills in affirmation, “That’s okay, I’ll get you all fixed up.” he says, settling it into his lap for the ride.</p><p>Something about how Hist talks to the little droid reminds Din of… it reminds him of himself, and of Grogu, and Din has to swallow a few times to get that tight feeling out of his throat. He refused to get worked up because of some droid and an ex-imp who obviously spent too much time talking to it.</p><p>"We can come back later, see if there’s anything I missed." Din offers when he feels he can speak again without betraying himself, and climbs into the front seat.</p><p>"Sure." Hist doesn’t sound too concerned.</p><p>“Can you handle another speeder ride?” Din asks.</p><p>“Guess I’ll have to, won’t I?”</p><p>“I mean are you— ”</p><p>His pulls the blanket up over the top of his head and holds it around himself, settling in close against Din’s back, “Painting the back of your tin-can ass in vomit isn’t high on my list of priorities, but priorities can change.” he says quietly.</p><p>Din sighs, “I’ll try to drive easy, just don’t fall off the bike.”</p><p>“I just wan’ sleep.” Hist says, and he sounds like he’s most of the way there already.</p><p>“Soon.” Din says, and he cranks up the speeder, driving them out into the snowy night.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Migs’ new name ‘Hist’ actually comes from the Star Wars Roleplaying game manual, and lists it as his nickname in the service. It seems it’s a word used as an exclamation to attract attention, or a call for silence (Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay.). The manual also mentions that Hist would occasionally give lessons in marksmanship to bounty hunters, and at the end of a week’s worth of lessons, had his students matching his skill.</p><p>I hope you enjoyed more of the ‘Din Failing to Read People and Migs Being Openly Miserable’ show</p><p>I usually write for other fandoms, but you can find me on the tumblr under the same name.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Proposition</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>When Migs woke up, he immediately wished he hadn’t.</p><p>His head swam, feeling like everything in it had been lifted out and stuffed back in like a botched engine rebuild, all old grease and rusted bearings that made everything grind and skip. He had no idea where he was or long he’d been here, and the general passage of time as a concept seemed as abstract as anything else. His stomach churned like a cement mixer and just about the only thing that was good about his situation was that he seemed to be both horizontal and warm. Moving made it worse right away, and if Migs thought the could open his mouth without fear of instantly vomiting all over himself, he would have cursed aloud. Lying very, very still seemed best.</p><p>Beneath him, whatever soft thing he was lying on vibrated dully, something he was pretty sure his bed had never done before— he recognized the blanket as his, the feel and the smell comfortably familiar, the pillow too— giving him the impression of lying in the belly of some vast whirring machine. Cracking open his eyes, Migs discovered this was at least partly true: it was mercifully dark, only two blurry soft amber and green lights illuminating the space in any meaningful way, but it looked like the inside of a ship. More specifically a ship’s sleeping berth.</p><p>It came back then, in bits and pieces. The cantina. That big Houk asshole. Keba. Mando. Not taking it seriously like he should’ve. Mando saving his sorry ass, and getting him patched up, <em>and</em> driving him home like he was Migs’ own personal repulsorcab and picking through the strewn wreckage of his shitty life and telling Migs that he could stay.</p><p>
  <em>Kriff.</em>
</p><p>Migs thinks he should be angry, furious even, that Mando had rolled in and adopted him like a dirty half-dead lothcat picked out of a dumpster, an act that was less about any sense of pleasure brought about by seeing a familiar face, but closer to the mercy of giving a sick animal a comfortable warm space to die in.</p><p>He hates that he could owe the Mandalorian something for this, feeling like they had finally squared it off after… After. He wouldn’t think about Morak, not without the possibility of inviting some real bad fucking dreams. He worked hard to get out of owing anybody anything, not that it fucking mattered. He hates that some chrome horn son of a bitch wrecked his place, and it wasn’t even that nice of a house to begin with— fuck he has to contact and tell her the unit’s fucked— but it was <em>his</em>. He hates that he can’t remember how he got here. Hates <em>everything</em>. He’s too tired to get mad, feels too close to heaving his guts up, but gets mad anyway.</p><p>“<em>Dank fucking farrik. Shit. That fucking metal bastard.</em>” Migs says aloud, but barely a whisper and without any tone to it at all. Tepid air wheezing through a vent.</p><p>Stomach acid threatens to leave his body in a violent way for that small transgression, and Migs swallows hard and closes his eyes again, tries to curl up from the shame of it all and realizes he’s lying on his stomach. Tries to move a little but he can’t seem to move his right arm in the way he wants and it aches right up into his shoulder.</p><p>He wonders where E91 is with the same anxious concern someone might have over the whereabouts of a lost pet, and drifts out again, not quite able to recall the last time he’d been able to do so easily without enough somaprin or hypnocane to tranquilize a wampa.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>He dreams anyway.</p><p>He dreams of lightning. A million shining red and white skeletal hands reaching across a sky gone blue-black as a bad bruise. Dreams of buildings rising out of an ashy wasteland like tombstones, the air so hot and thick you could almost take a bite out of it and scattered bodies burnt so badly they were little more than foamy carbon, only held together in any recognizable shape by the fading memory of having once been something living—</p><p>—He dreams of Valin Hess, his face little more than a red dripping skull with bugging eyes under an officer cap and a smoking, dark oozing hole where his black thudding heart should have been. Hears his voice in that awful drawl and that awful mouth full of too many teeth whispering <em>“Trooper… Trooper...” </em>and the ground shakes from the force of the storm, shakes like a rhydonium explosion that rolls through his chest in a wave and tries to rattle him to pieces.</p><p>A tremor to shake a world apart</p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>The walls of his coffin are shaking, and Migs is awake all at once courtesy of a go-mode adrenaline dump, and sits up too quickly, then hit by a wave of vertigo so sharp he has to blindly reach out to touch the cold, metal wall to keep himself from pitching face first into it. When he tries to use his right hand to do so, it’s heavy and stiff and doesn’t respond the way it’s fucking supposed to and he falls gracelessly onto the bunk in a tangle of bedclothes. It takes him a second, but he remembers the milky plasto-cast and grits his teeth in irritation. The blue sling has migrated to twist up around his neck and shoulder and there’s something squishy and cold that feels good molded to the back of his head that he doesn’t remember being there before. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to recognize it as an icegel pac from a medkit, and twice as long to clumsily peel it off and untangle himself.</p><p>All around him, the metal can he’s currently trapped in keeps rattling like it might just fly apart at the rivets and it sets every nerve on edge, the sweating night terror of a dream just barely starting to slough off him. And here Migs thought the Mandalorian had big money. At least enough to be able to afford a classic starship like a <em>Razor Crest</em>, credit guzzlers that all older ships were. Whatever this thing was couldn’t be the same ship or anything worth even half that.</p><p>Migs tries sitting up again and feels his sweater sticking uncomfortably to his chest and back, cold sweat having drenched every inch of him. His hands are clammy-cold and shaking, and he wants to fill each one with a blaster just for something to squeeze that might offer some sliver of security but can’t remember where any of them are. The disarmed and vulnerable feeling this brings makes it all worse somehow. Worse still, he really has to piss and can’t seem to find the fucking door mechanism to save his karking life—</p><p>The door whooshes open, and Migs squints, the drowsy yellow and muted white of the low-power LEDs still somehow hurting his eyes, but still too dim to get a real good look at anything. No sign of Mando at least. The rattling is significantly less out here, and Migs wonders if it was just some loud fucking airvent above his head causing his heart to attempt the escape from the confines of his ribs. It’s much colder outside the dark nest of the berth, and he shivers, wondering where his boots ended up. Or the rest of his shit for that matter.</p><p>He at least finds the fresher without tripping and killing himself, but the lightning-white flash of the ceiling’s cablight just about scoops his eyes out. He leans his aching head against his good hand he’s got braced against the wall while he does his thing, groaning like a drunk in a backwater cantina.</p><p>After a few moments the light hurts a fraction less, and Migs chances a glance in the small mirror above the tiny sink.</p><p><em>Yeah. </em>Just as he thought, total fucking horror show.</p><p>“Fuck...” he breathes, absently poking the purple-black bruise that wreathed his blood filled eye. The white rectangle bandage on his face was almost the same sicky green-white color as the un-fucked half of his face. He’s got a good five o’clock shadow going from his face and the rest of his head making him look about as homeless as he's become. There's not much else to note, so he doesn't waste another second looking.</p><p>He’d never really been anything worth looking at. Just a mean, red headed male, and pale like something lying dead in a cave. Then his hair started falling out in his thirties, probably from the drug cocktail the service voluntold everybody to take, or stress, or maybe just shitty fucking genes, and he’d just shaved the rest of it off. Fuck it, right? As long as he kept in shape and projected confidence he’d still been able to get some now and then. Confidence went a long way when you had a womp weasel face and a head like a fucking candilin orange.</p><p>The excited chirps of E-91 greet him outside the fresher, and Migs feels something like relief hit his gut, feeling dumb for being so worried about a metal trapezoid on wheels.</p><p>“Hey,” he says to him, voice sounding rough to his own ears, “you better not be fixing anything in this flying trash heap, you hear?”</p><p>“It’s already tightened every loose rivet it could reach, despite anything I tell it.” comes Mando’s voice from somewhere behind him, and Migs jumps, his whole body flashing back to a flickering red corridor on a prison ship.</p><p>E-91 releases a series of whirring clicks and burrs, and spins behind Migs socked feet, hiding in his shadow. Migs bends and picks him up, holding him under the crook of his good arm, feeling the wheels spin back and forth aimlessly, like the irked swishing of a lothcat’s tail.</p><p>Din descends the cockpit ladder, looking much the same as Migs remembered him, no shit trooper armor that cracks like cheap plastic. No big scared eyes like a baby porg, just an impassive metal helmet that took everything thrown at it but gave nothing back and drove Migs absolutely fucking banthashit <em>crazy</em>.</p><p>“Yeah, he does that.” Migs says weakly, looking away from that t-visor and waiting for his heart to slow down. Or just fucking give out. Whichever came first. “Ya know, it’s a common courtesy not to sneak up on other people.” Migs continues acidly, instead of any other bullshit he could have said.</p><p>“This is my ship.” Mando says, as if that gives him the fucking right.</p><p>Migs gives the room a once over, “SS-54 Assault ship right? It looks like you dredged it out of a swamp, what happened to the <em>other</em> old rusty ship you had?” He’s feeling a little better now, but maybe that’s because he’s been given a brand new opportunity to be an asshole.</p><p>Mando— no, <em>Din</em>, takes his shit attitude with more grace than Migs deserves, “Moff Gideon happened.” he says, and that's answer enough.</p><p>“Ah, 'rest in fucking pieces' then.” Migs says.</p><p>“How are you feeling?” Din asks, moving past him into the small mess section of the ship. Migs follows him because what the kriff else is he supposed to do? “You’ve been out since last night, and most of the day.” Din continues, answering a question Migs didn’t yet have the bandwidth to ask. He fills a dented tin messcup with water and hands it to him.</p><p>“I feel like I climbed out of sarlacc pit.” Migs says, finding no point or benefit to lying about it. He sets E-91 down on the floor again and takes the offered cup with a muttered thanks and sips from it. He feels his insides slither unpleasantly, but he doesn’t think he’ll be sick again, and it gets the bad blood and sour metal taste out of his mouth.</p><p>“You were pretty out of it last night.” Din says, leaning back against the counter, like they’re having some kind of nice conversation instead of whatever Migs keeps trying to make of it.</p><p>“I don’t remember much.” Migs says honestly, though he <em>does</em> remember feeling so sick he prayed Din would just put a blaster bolt through his skull to end it and dump him off in a snowbank.</p><p>Din nods, like he’s processing this, “Think you could eat? You should.” he says like he actually gives a shit, “Eat something, I mean.” And he stands like he's nervous, attentive but flighty like a long legged creature someone dressed up in Beskar. Like he’s just waiting for Migs to act so he can react accordingly.</p><p>“I know what you meant.” Migs says, and something must show on his face—distaste, nausea, or some level of misery—because Din seems to reconsider, tilting his Mando helmet like a bird looking eyeing up something small and wretched wriggling in the dirt.</p><p>“Maybe something hot to drink? Tea?”</p><p>“What are you, my Nana?” Migs shoots back, but there’s no venom in it, because he’s suddenly exhausted and all the adrenaline’s bled out of him leaving him cold. He slides into the cold bolted bench at the mess table, blearily watching a man in full Beskar armor putter mechanically around a mess with rickety-ass wall cabinets five times shittier than the ones Migs had in his own sad hovel. Din's pulling mugs and bags and utensils out and getting the tiny stove going, and Migs feels like he’s suddenly the star of some wacked-out holomovie instead of the shit reality of his own life.</p><p>Migs scrubs a hand over his face, wincing when he accidentally pushes too hard on his eyes. Yesterday he’d been blowing credits at the cantina like he usually did on his off days. Now all his shit’s been flipped on its head by someone he thought he’d go the rest of his wretched life without ever seeing again.</p><p>“This is fucking <em>bonkers</em>.” he says aloud.</p><p>“What?” Din asks, looking over his shoulder.</p><p>“Nothin.’” Migs says quickly, feeling crazy. He can’t quite seem to see right, objects looking blurrier than they’re supposed to, and when he tries to focus it hurts his eyes. He settles for closing his eyes against it, unwilling to think about how it might not get better. Couldn’t afford to think of shit like that right now.</p><p>Din’s chattier than Migs remembers, getting right into it while the water heats, “I went back to your place and grabbed what we didn’t get last night, perishable food, dry goods, bedding, anything worth salvaging.” he says, carefully spooning out some kind of reddish-brown powder into a ceramic mug, like it’s something he’s done a hundred times before, and it’s all so unbearably domestic that Migs feels… something he hasn’t felt in a long time anyway. Just as quick as he feels it, it’s gone slipping off him to sink down somewhere he can’t quite reach.</p><p>Din steps out of the Mess to dig through one of the ship’s storage compartments. He comes back with Migs’ service bag and plunks it on the table. “Let me know if there’s something I missed.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Migs says, feeling like a broken holovid, stands and unzips the bag. It’s mostly firearms among a few other things, and most of the shit he might care about losing is here, but, as he suspected, or more accurately, <em>dreaded</em>—</p><p>“Couple of my slugthrowers are missing.” he says tonelessly, plunking back down to sit again, and resting his good hand delicately against his forehead.</p><p><em>Fuck</em>.</p><p>“Good ones?” Din asks.</p><p>Migs flicks his eyes up to look at him, offended, “Uh, <em>yeah</em>. I don’t collect garbage.”</p><p>His cycler rifles, adventurer model slugthrowers and some older antique shit that hadn’t been exactly cheap. Maybe he could have hid them better, but he hadn’t had access to better storage yet. <em>Kriff and sithspit. </em>He resists the urge to slam his fist into the metal table, knowing he’ll only just hurt himself, just the thought of feeling anything at all is exhausting.</p><p>But, of course, he gets mad anyway.</p><p>He stares at his hands and that stupid fucking gel plasto-cast that made his right arm look like he was seeing it through a fucking dirty fishtank. “Ya know when you think you’re on the upswing and you think you’ve got all your shit together and someone comes along and fucks that all up?” he’s smiling, but he doesn’t feel anything even remotely close to good humor, “It all falls apart and every good thing you’ve ever worked for gets ripped away from you?”</p><p>“Yes.” Din says, and the earnestness of the admission has Migs shutting up. He kind of wishes he could have seen his face when he’d said it, but there’s nothing to pull from unreadable surface of the helmet, and Migs can only guess as to what he means. With a different ship and no kid? Yeah, he could guess.</p><p>Everybody had bad shit they didn’t want to talk about. Migs knew that better than most.</p><p>Behind Din, the water starts to boil, whistling out through the blue enameled kettle, and Migs thinks it’s a little funny, ‘cause a newer starship would have an instaheater that kept boiling water on hand at all times, but there was some small charm to having something a bit more old fashioned. Maybe Din just liked it better.</p><p>“Thanks for going back and getting what was left.” Migs says, reminding himself that he was trying to be less of cantankerous asshole, but having to be grateful to someone else for any reason always made him feel edgy.</p><p>“How many of your guns are missing?” Din asks while he removes the kettle, pouring the hot water into the mug, stirring gently with that hypnotic clanking sound that always seemed to happen at just the right tempo to relax him. Din sets the cup of tea in front of him, and Migs immediately curls his hands around it, savoring the heat and feeling the tightness finally start to leave his shoulders.</p><p>Math is hard right now but, “Eight.” he answers, not quite feeling anything at all. There's probably not a whole lot he can do about it, maybe not without attracting the kind of trouble for himself that he didn't have the capacity to deal with. Din nods like Migs has just revealed some great and wise truth about the galaxy, but doesn’t speak.</p><p>While Migs stares at his hands and the mug, the tea begins to change from a mud brown into a bright creamy yellow, the color of something he might’ve hacked up the previous evening.</p><p>“It tastes better than it looks.” Din says, probably noticing Migs stink eye, and he gives it an experimental sip. It’s sweet and spicy, going down smooth and settling easy, but he doesn’t push his luck by drinking it too quickly, choosing instead to nurse it for a bit. He didn’t want to put much thought into why Mando, or <em>Din</em> was being good to him right now. It wasn’t like they were friends.</p><p>“Do you have any plans for what you’ll do? Anywhere you’re thinking of going?” Din asks, taking a seat across from him.</p><p><em>Yeah</em>, they sure as shit weren’t friends. Guy obviously couldn't wait to get rid of him.</p><p>“Right to it then, huh? I haven’t really been able to think about it much, on account of being half dead covered in my own vomit.” Migs says, leaning back with a smirk, “Trust me Mando, I’ll be out of your helmet just as soon as I figure out a nice spot for you to dump me off— ”</p><p>“That’s not a good idea.” Din says suddenly, firmly.</p><p>Migs blinks and cocks his head, “<em>Excuse</em> me?”</p><p>“I mean, you shouldn’t be going anywhere.”</p><p><em>That</em> got his heart going again, and he started to sweat, his good hand curling around the mug so tightly he was afraid he might just break it. “What, are you gonna keep me here forever? I see your face for a hot minute on some backwater planet and Mando law says we’re fucking married now?”</p><p>Din’s shoulders slump and he gently holds out both of his hands in that universal gesture like he’s attempting to calm a frightened animal, and maybe Migs is a little freaked out. That felt like a fucking <em>threat</em>.</p><p>“No, no, of course not, you misunderstand me,” Din says, “I only meant until you were healed up.”</p><p>“Kriff Mando, what the fuck do you want from me?” Migs asks, voice rising. His nerves were all shot to Hell and back and he didn’t currently have the mental fortitude to tolerate any bullshit mindgames or beating around the bush from <em>anyone</em>, especially not from some fucking goody-good-boy Mandalorian.</p><p>He wishes he could stop being such a festering wound of a person, wishes he could calm down and think straight, but he can’t, and he’s surprised by how <em>scared</em> he finds himself. Scared at the thought of becoming a prisoner again. “You think I owe you something for letting me go? You gonna take me back to the fucking chopfields if I refuse? <em>What</em>?”</p><p>Din seems nervous, leaned far back in the bench seat like he wants to be anywhere else but planted directly in the crosshairs of Mig’s loopy fucking lunatic anger. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to handle it or just wasn’t expecting it but he damn well <em>should</em> have been.</p><p>E-91 keeps bumping into his feet and whistling and Migs tucks his feet together to resist the urge to kick him, because he knew he’d hate himself after.</p><p>Din tilts his head and rubs his hands— he’s not wearing gloves Migs realizes, suddenly Din’s big hands are all he can look at, and he keeps his hands where Migs could fucking <em>see</em> them— against the surface of the table and all Migs can picture is that baby face, that messy brown helmet hair and those big, dumb fucking fathier eyes boring a hole right through him.</p><p>“You don’t owe me anything Hist, and I mean that, I just wanted to help.” Din says, slow and easy, like he’s trying to talk someone down from jumping off a building, and Migs suddenly regrets giving his old service nickname with a string of wretched memories attached to it, wishing he’d just kept it like his mom would have wanted him to. “I didn’t bring you here with the intention of making your life harder.”</p><p>Despite himself, Migs believes him, but he’s not quite done being an ungrateful piece of shit. “You’ll forgive me if I’m a little skeptical here <em>Din</em>, because I’m not used to anyone wanting to do anything for me out of the goodness of their fucking heart.” he grits.</p><p>Migs had been right there when Din had risked everything he held dear to him, hadn’t he? His Mando religion, his beliefs, his entire <em>identity</em>. All to save some little green kid with big stupid ears and cute eyes. Shit Migs didn’t have the nuts to do. He didn’t even have anyone in his life worth going through all the trouble. Din wouldn’t have even had to even do it if Migs hadn’t bitched out at the critical fucking moment, because he was too goddamned scared to face his murderer of a CO. But at least Migs had known exactly who he was coming out of that Rhydonium facility. Maybe Din doesn’t even know that anymore, and if that isn’t a sobering thought, he doesn’t know what is.</p><p>“Let me start over?” Din asks with a sudden huff, and a noticeable slump of his shoulders, “I'm not always… good at explaining myself.”</p><p>“Oh, no shit?” Migs says like the asshole he is, and he’s calming down now, feeling less like he’s been cornered.</p><p>“I’ve followed up on all my leads here, I was waiting for you to wake before I took off to the capitol.” Din begins.</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“I have a proposition for you, if you’re interested.”</p><p>“A <em>what</em> now?”</p><p>“A job.” Din says.</p><p>Migs blinks, lip curling, “I’m not your kriffing charity case.”</p><p>“I don’t intend for you to be, I’m looking for <em>your</em> help on this. If you're not interested, I'll drop wherever you want to go, but if you are, there's credits in it for you, and I suspect you might get a chance to get your guns back.”</p><p>Migs considered a moment and takes a deep, soothing breath. Having reeled his shit back in from his outburst, he felt a little stupid now. Sure, sometimes he got scared for no reason at all, getting the shakes all on his own without any help from anybody else, but he’d admit he’d probably overreacted just a bit.</p><p>Yeah, people usually were trying to fuck him over, but <em>technically</em>, Din never had. Migs would admit that the prison ship cluster was kind of on him, because Din hadn’t really been expecting to get betrayed, and while Migs hadn’t quite known it was gonna happen, he still went with it when it did because he’d known Ran and the other assholes only half a second longer than he’d known Mando. He thought he was being smart to pick the side he’d already signed up to be on. What a big fucking mistake <em>that</em> was.</p><p>And the last time they’d worked together, while an absolute nightmare and high up in the ranks of the worst days of his life, it <em>did </em>technically work out.</p><p>“Ok, ok,” he says sighing, “What's the job?”</p><p>Din fills him in on Boba Fett’s recent takeover of Jabba’s Palace on Tatooine, which honestly, doesn’t surprise him much based on what he’d seen the other Mandalorian get up to during their brief acquaintance. He also goes into detail about the Nikto gambler he’s hunting for and despite himself, Migs gets interested.</p><p>“Noibbyl Choptu,” Migs says, “that name’s really familiar somehow, but I’m shit with names, you got a bounty puck of this guy?” he asks, sipping the last of his tea.</p><p>“No puck, but I have a fobb. It’s a private job, but Fett sent a holoimage.” Din touches something on his Beskar vambrace and it flickers to life projecting a grainy blue image, “his skin is green.” Din adds, “He’s been with the Hutt empire most of his life.”</p><p>“I know him.” Migs says, blinking at the image.</p><p>“<em>What</em>?”</p><p>“Well, not personally, he was my end of the week shooting lesson, but I’d canceled because the Night Race was coming up.” Migs explains, hardly able to believe it. “You say he’s a big weapons guy? One of the reasons I came to Malastare was because there’s a big ammo manufacturing facility here, one of only a few in the galaxy, it’s pretty nice to not have to pay the off-world import fees when you’ve got a marksmanship gig.”</p><p>“Maybe Choptu came here with something other than pod betting in mind.” Din says.</p><p>“Maybe.” Migs says, considering.</p><p>Din reached a hand out to him, “You good with this?”</p><p>Migs nods. Fuck it. His schedule was unexpectedly clear. “Yeah.”</p><p>They shook on it.</p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“I don't know how much help I'll be, with my head all fucked up.” Migs admits, sliding into the passenger seat and buckling himself in while Din runs through the launch sequence for a dump of a ship he doesn’t even remember seeing the outside of.</p><p>He realizes he doesn't just mean the injury, but Din looks at him like he gets it.</p><p>“I'll pick up some bacta patches, they should help.” Din says, not unkindly.</p><p>“Hey thanks, then maybe I can strangle Keba with <em>both</em> my fucking hands.”</p><p>“You should try to sleep again once we’re up.” Din says instead of replying, “It’ll be a couple of hours before we can start out,” and Migs nods, not intending to do anything of the kind. He can’t sleep on the best of nights without chemical help these days, but Din doesn’t need to know that.</p><p>All at once the ship lifts off, and Migs sits with a hand over his eyes, nearly overwhelmed by the swirling motion and the wave of glittering lights trying to slice his head in half. He closes his eyes and breathes through his nose slow and deliberate.</p><p>Din tilts his helmet in Migs’ direction, “You better not puke in my cockpit.” he states.</p><p>“Keep it up Mando and I’m aiming for the control panel.” Migs says bluntly.</p><p>Something metal and shiny catches his eye, and in his quest to look at anything that wasn’t the undulating nausea parade outside the transparisteel, the metal ball of the gear knob catches his eye. It doesn’t quite match the rest of the dash panel, and he unthinkingly touches it, spins it just a little and it rolls out through his grasping fingers to plink down to floor to roll audibly around the grates at their feet.</p><p>“Ah, <em>shit</em>.” he mutters, when he fails to grab it.</p><p>He <em>feels</em> more than sees Din slowly turning to stare at him.</p><p>Migs scrunches his face and keeps his eyes determinedly on the console dash.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>My document program’s dictionary is a joke now with all these fucking made-up space words. Updates will be a little slower because I’m back at work instead of in covid quarantine, and I injected plot in this because I can’t just be simple and I have no idea what I’m doing lmaaaao.</p><p>Each new chapter will be another exercise in fun curse words that may or may not be from Space Boston.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Well, Your Left Hand's Free</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sorry for the delay, work steals all my time and energy. I also accidentally injected too much plot, so this is the grave I have to lie in now. It's a little longer than previous chapters, so I hope that makes up for the wait.</p><p>It’s a grand comedy of errors trying to keep all my googled star wars wiki info and name generator shit straight. If anything is glaringly different from previous chapters, let me know, lmao</p><p>I find Din very difficult to write for. Migs is significantly easier for whatever reason.</p><p>Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>The flight to Pixelito wasn’t long, but the spaceport was crowded, ships jostling in from off world like luminous fish into the bottleneck of a low river. Din was forced to ask the shuddering bulk of <em>The Mudhorn</em> to circle more than once waiting for the landing confirmation. A shyyyo bird, dipping vast and easy-winged on fading daylight before it could finally roost.</p><p>Maybe for the last time, if he couldn’t get this hunk of junk back up off the ground.</p><p>This delay, unfortunately, gave him plenty of time to reflect on the wisdom of his life choices. The most recent of which had folded himself into the passenger’s seat like an unhappy tooka, any and all hard edges and angles draped deceptively in soft black. Din could feel the threat of sharp teeth lurking just beneath, ready to peel out at the slightest infraction. Though, Migs—<em>Hist</em>, Din reminded himself—was considerably less agitated now that they’d agreed on some kind of game-plan, and his face already going a little green from the heaving motion of takeoff had done much to diminish the threat of any lingering aggression.</p><p>It wasn’t long into the flight before Hist started sinking into the seat, head bobbing as he got drowsy in the lazy glow of golden hour. The low sunlight glinted off the snow-dusted mountains and drifted in soft and warm through the narrow stretch of transparisteel. Hist crossed his arms as best he could with the milky plasto-cast, wedged his good hand into the opposite armpit, tipped his head to the side and passed out.</p><p> </p><p>This was a marked improvement over being on the verge of some panic fueled attack or airsickness, and sleep wiped away that furrowed brow of suspicion, making his face into something that could be looked at without trepidation. Din let him be, and carefully bent to retrieve the metal gear knob from where it was rolling around like a lost marble at his feet. He screwed it back onto the gear stick with a carefulness that bordered on reverence.</p><p>The methodical preparations performed at an altar for the practice and worship of some lost religion.</p><p>He’d almost forgotten to check the commbox last night, but managed to carve out a quiet moment in the cockpit as the rosegold sheen of early morning started pinking the sky.</p><p>After a brief examination, Din’s new passenger seemed unlikely to slip into a coma and die in his sleep, curled up quiet in the nest of blankets Din had hastily thrown together and deposited him in, and he had waited until he was fairly confidant that the small beeping droid wheeling about the metal floors wasn’t going to prod and poke every wobbling corner of his ship. “<em>No</em>.” he’d told it, when it tried to wipe at a spot of grease on the wall or tighten a loose knut. Satisfied when it couldn’t follow him up the ladder with its small ineffectual wheels, and only feeling a little bad when he could still hear its sad beeping through the open mouth in the floor.</p><p>Opening the commbox on a schedule was the only vice Din allowed himself. Secret and bittersweet, but carefully controlled so as to not ruin him utterly. The act of placing himself in the pilot’s seat, tapping the blinking hololight on the control panel that would open the menu. The minute excitement of possibility building while it booted up, the image projector turning blue as it turned on, all shreds of his hope hinging on this thrice repeated daily act. It was near ritualistic in how precisely he carried out the steps. If he’d been more of a religious man, he might have even bowed his head and prayed.</p><p>At the blinking blue of the <em>New Holo Message</em> notification his heart had just about launched itself into his throat, his hands going clammy and almost clumsy in his eagerness to open it—but it had been Cara. Cara giving an update about the state of Nevarro, the interrogation of Moff Gideon, talking about Greef and his endeavors, the culvert hideaway, and asking after Din.</p><p>Asking where he’s been, where he’s going. His plans. Information Din had never been forthcoming with in the past, and now even less so.</p><p>It was… <em>good</em> to hear from her, he supposed. Good to know that she thought of him, and hoped he was well. He was happy to hear from her, and told her so in a quick message he sent back to her. Unwilling, or rather unable, to do much more than text, afraid his disappointment might be glaringly apparent to her in a holovid. If she knew he was fine, then it would please her. Or rather, it would please her enough to leave him be for a little while longer.</p><p>And with that the game began again.</p><p>He’d counted this as last night’s third check, so today he had three more opportunities. Four if they completed the bounty. He almost felt like a gambler, some sad sack blowing his last credit on one more hand at the sabaac table. He huffs a quiet laugh at the thought, startlingly audible in the enclosed bubble of the cockpit.</p><p>
  <em>If a man laughs alone in the cockpit of his ship and there’s no one around to hear him, does he make a sound?</em>
</p><p>Sometimes Din wondered if it was even possible to mourn someone who hadn’t yet died, but wasn’t death just the same as being sent somewhere beyond all reach? A road he couldn’t follow, a place he couldn’t visit?</p><p>Picking up the ex-merc was impulsive, Din could acknowledge that now. Another stitched in scene of “<em>why not?</em>” in the vast tattered tapestry of bewildered misery his life had become. He was now over a day past his initial estimate, and he had yet to send Fett any updates. What would he even tell him? <em>Found Mayfeld getting assaulted in a cantina, now he’s helping me and squatting in my ship</em>?</p><p>In his armor pocket, the tracking fobb beeped on and on like a forgotten alarm, keeping pace with his heartbeat.</p><p>It was unlike him to drift through the galaxy collecting people. He’d considered it a few times before, even offered a place on his ship to Kuiil. To think of his friend now, and his sacrifice, brought back the ache along with a familiar swelling bubble of guilt. Kuiil died to prevent what Din had later allowed to happen, but there was nothing that could be done about it now.</p><p>He had been tired of working and living alone then, long before Grogu had come into his life. Now, he couldn’t quite find the words to explain how having another living thing aboard his ship had immediately set him at ease. A handful of cement and slag, hastily snatched up and flung wetly against the corner of a crumbling foundation, hoping to forestall imminent collapse a little while longer.</p><p>After so many years working and living alone, loneliness was something half formed and newly discovered, wedged slimy and soft in all the dark, dusty places he never looked into.</p><p>Somewhere in the walls of <em>The Mudhorn,</em> the Darksaber and all it entailed seeped out like the half remembered edges of a black dream, and Migs Mayfeld, now Hist Chreswi, knew absolutely nothing about any of it. The feeling of relief this knowledge brought to him could have been bottled and sold as a cure-all.</p><p>Hist dozes while they do slow loops in the sky, and doesn’t wake when Din brings them down to finally land in an empty lot. Din looks at him, notices the skin of his forearms that aren’t covered by black sweater are dusted with freckles, and Din can almost feel the heat of an unseen hand, pressed against the side of his helmet.</p><p>His own hand, stripped of his glove to bare skin and laid flat against the inward cheek’s curve hadn’t felt at all the same. Neither had a tiny, clawed three fingered hand, brushing against the side of his face. Brushing so lightly, and yet the feeling was almost akin to pain.</p><p>Din leaves his passenger napping in the seat and braves the crowded spaceport in search of a pharmacy.</p><p>=+=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>People swirl around him on the steel thoroughfare like water skirting the edges of a stone, careful not to touch or bump into him, even accidentally. A wash of colorful shapes and faces he doesn’t have the strength to try to peel out from behind the veil of his own blurry thoughts.</p><p>Synthetic white light blares down on him from above like the rays of a cold sun while he wanders through narrow carpeted aisles, looking for bacta patches to fill his pathetically empty medkit. People look at him over the tops of shelves like he's a curiosity. Something singular and frightening seen through glass or steel bars at some back alley five credit sideshow.</p><p>Somewhere in the pharmacy, a baby is crying, the sound coring through his helmet like a drill.</p><p>He’s only able to come up with the cheaper and less effective synthetic bacta, but thinks it’s probably better than nothing. He picks up a few more supplies at the grocery next door. Ones he’s sorely been needing. Buys joppa stew and other similar ration packs, more than he probably needs, and a few more palatable and fresher canned options that were closer to what most people considered “real food,” but something he rarely, if ever, splurged on.</p><p>He buys emerald grapes without any thought at all, having bought them so many times before.</p><p>His HUD tells him more snow is on the way five days from now, but any predictions further out than three days become mysticism as far as he’s concerned. He’ll be gone before then anyway. Maybe both of them will be.</p><p>He doesn't like the faces that look back at him, but he supposed that looking at him probably wasn’t pleasant for them either. He tries to imagine it, himself in their place. The eyes of his helm two black slashes, draining all empathy and understanding into the impassive t-visor like a black hole, taking everything, giving nothing in return.</p><p>It makes him feel… angry? Upset in some way, because he knew this would not have bothered him only a few months ago.</p><p>When Din returns to the ship with his purchases later that morning, Hist is awake, and sitting cross-legged on the floor with a handful of tools scattered around him.</p><p>Hist raises his eyebrows, giving Din an unidentifiable look when he comes in. His bloodshot right eye, pale face and dark clothes makes him look unsettling and strange, like some species Din can’t quite identify, or a phantasm from an old nightmare, slinking in between that space between dreaming and waking.</p><p>A familiar black scarf is tucked securely around his neck, and two blasters rest in the leather holsters wrapping his chest. He’s already working to bust out the boot dent in the lifted trapezoidal carapace of the droid. Or rather, doing the best he can with one good hand and the other trapped in a cast the color of dirty, milky water.</p><p>The cast itself had some mild, but deliberate damage where it terminated at the elbow, as though he'd gone at it with cable cutters and abandoned the task partway through.</p><p>Hist was also apparently in the middle of a holocall and Din briefly glimpses an elderly Dug female, anxiously wringing her gnarled, shriveled hands hovering within a soft triangle of blue light emanating out from the droid. The droid, as though bored, wheeled back and forth in a slow arc around two hammers, a screwdriver, and a small pile of loose screws. Din wasn’t sure if MSE droids were usually capable of projection displays, but maybe Hist had modified this one to make it to work as something more than just a pet.</p><p>The volume on the call drops noticeably after Din enters.</p><p>Din nods at him and busies himself by putting the supplies he picked up away in the little kitchenette, trying not to eavesdrop, but in the small cabin of the ship it simply wasn’t possible unless he wanted to slink away to hide in the cockpit.</p><p>“I know, I <em>know</em>, I’m sorry, I wasn’t even there when it happened ok? I was real, <em>real </em>busy getting my ass save— getting my head smashed in, ok?” Hist says quickly, attempting to keep his voice low and failing miserably.</p><p>That didn’t seem to help calm the woman at all, and she launched into a veritable tirade, words mostly coming too fast for Din to translate.</p><p>“Can you get me that 3/8 out of the box?” Hist asks the mouse droid in a loud whisper. The droid <em>brrrs</em> and skates away to the opened toolbox a few feet away, naked as a shelled beetle with its metal innards a small galaxy of blinking blue and green lights. Consequently, it brings the projected holocall along with it and Din, suddenly desperate to look busy, absently clicks the chargers for his blasters on and then off again with no real purpose, hoping he’s somehow still out of the holocall’s line of sight.</p><p>“<em>Stupid—</em>” Din catches pretty easily, and “<em>my poor unit—</em>” and “<em>I can’t believe you—” </em>She sounds upset, Din can hear the tears in her voice over a low yowling sound that he hesitantly identifies as a lothcat seeking attention. Based on the layers of sound and volume, it might even have been several.</p><p>“No the <em>other </em>3/8 driver, E c’mon we’ve been over this!” Hist snaps as the droid returns with what Din can only assume is the wrong tool, and the tone of the Dug’s lecturing abruptly changes.</p><p>“No, no no no, Jaana! I wasn’t talking to you,” Hist attempts to explain, “just my <em>fucking</em> droid here<em>—</em>” the droid zips away, bleating an affronted <em>brrrap! brraap!</em> and Hist tries to grab for him, misses, yells “Aww, baby don’t be like that! <em>Fuck—</em> no, not you! <em>Not</em> you!”</p><p>Din hears, “<em>Language is appalling—</em>” as the droid burrs and zips by him again, quick as a silverfish. Hist glances at Din then, and just as quickly looks away, face and ears flushed pink.</p><p>“Come on, come on! I’m on a fucking <em>call</em>!” he hisses, and the droid slowly wheels back, the bleating noise it makes almost apologetic. “Kriffin <em>A</em>...”</p><p>There’s a long string of words from the holocall and Din tunes them out, loading a new charge cartridge into his Amban sniper rifle.</p><p>“Yes, I’m <em>sorry</em> ok?” He hears Hist say, then sigh loudly, “Yup. Yyyyuup. <em>Yup</em>.” Din could almost feel the ex-merc’s temper beginning to rise, an electric stove coming up to temperature.</p><p>When he turns back to the scene, Hist is rapidly tapping something into his data pad and talking loud enough to be heard over the tearful woman, “Listen, the transfer’s going through, ok? Go get yourself another one of those little porcelain kitty figurines you like or whatever,” he says before being interrupted by another stream.</p><p>“Alright. <em>Alright</em>. I will! <em>Fuck!</em>” He snaps, then, “I’ll be in touch about the rest<em>—okbye</em>!” He ends the call before she can respond and rubs his hands over his face wincing, then rises with a rough, irritated sound. Din can see that his boots are unlaced and flop open about his feet like he’s stepped into a couple of black cabbages.</p><p>"She's fucking killing me, I need a caf," he says to the room.<br/><br/>“Was that… your landlady?" Din asks carefully.<br/><br/>“Yeah, yeah, sorry you had to see that.” Hist says, sounding an equal mix of embarrassed and exasperated, “She thinks she's my new <em>mommy,</em>” he says with a twisted scowl on his face, “This might shock you, but she's none too thrilled with her unit getting trashed, but I guess that makes two of us.” a beat, then “She’s nice though, I guess. A little anxious, but hey, who isn’t?” he adds, voice tuned down to something softer.<br/><br/>“She wants credits I take it?”<br/><br/>“Uh, <em>yeah</em>. I have a few ideas how to pay for it. Hoping to make it somebody else's problem, but gotta try and be a good boy and keep my shiny new chain code squeaky clean.”</p><p>Din could only guess as to who and what he meant.</p><p>The bruise around Hist's bloodshot eye was already going yellow and purple, the bactapatch from the medcenter speeding up the healing process. He’d removed the original patch, exposing raw, abraided skin. Din remembered the new supplies he picked up and dug them out of his pockets.<br/><br/>“Here.” Din says, holding one out to him.</p><p>“Oh,” Hist says, eyes darting from it to Din’s t-visor and back before he settles on looking somewhere just to the left of his face. “What do I owe you?”</p><p>“Nothing, needed to restock anyway.” Din says, “they're synth tho, not as good.” And, nodding Hist takes it, then flounders a moment, looks at the fresher door, then back, clenching his hands. It takes Din an embarrassingly long moment to recognize the difficulty.</p><p>“I’ll do it.” Din says before he can change his mind.</p><p>The atmosphere in the room seems to slither away, leaving something thick and tepid in its place, but Hist nods “Ok,” and lets Din take the bandage back. He’s silent as Din opens the sterile packing, and goes utterly still when Din touches him, tipping his head gently to the side. Din can’t even hear him breathing, and realizes Hist was holding his breath. If not for the muscle working furiously in his jaw and his pulse beating hard in his throat, Din would have thought he’d suddenly transformed into a mannequin.</p><p>Hist focuses on some distant point ahead, blinking rapidly as the moment stretches on and on, and Din watches the heart-rate meter climb on his HUD, rising, along with something heavy and unknowable like a dark cloud heavy with moisture and crackling with electricity.</p><p>He can feel the heat of bare skin even through his gloves, and thinks maybe this was a stupid idea.</p><p>Din hastily fixes the bandage in place, hands more clumsy than they were a few seconds ago, and unable to shake the feeling that he'd done something he shouldn't have. Crossed some invisible line that neither realized had already been drawn.</p><p>“All done.” Din says, and steps away, putting some space back between them.</p><p>Hist seems to come alive again, letting a sharp breath out through his nose, "Great." he says, looking at everything except Din.</p><p>He’s quick to tug on a black knit hat, and his cold weather coat, And bends to awkwardly lace up his boots, cursing when they keep slipping out of his bad hand.</p><p>“I'll put your shell back on later,” Hist directs at the droid, “be good, ok?”</p><p>It beeps, seemingly pleased.</p><p>He looks at Din then, "We doing this thing?"</p><p>Din nods.</p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>“I’m driving.” Hist announces at the speeder rental and snatches the key from Din’s hand almost as soon as the lady at the counter had taken Din’s credits and handed it over.</p><p>“I’ve seen how you drive,” Din says, “It left a lot to be desired.”</p><p>“Well, unless you like walking, <em>I’m</em> fucking driving,” Hist says insistently, “And it’s not like this rig, piece of shit that it is, is in danger of exploding.”</p><p>He had a point.</p><p>“You good to drive?” Din asks while they walk to the rental lot. He can’t help but feel he’s earned the right to needle him just a little, “What’s your med pamphlet say?”</p><p>“I think it said go fuck yourself.” Hist retorts quickly with a sharp look, “but I don’t know, <em>you tell me</em>,” he says, looking at Din and tilting his head, and Din feels an echo of their first meeting. Hist kicks the speeder awake then, setting it in gear, then “I sure as shit didn’t read it.”</p><p>Din sighs heavily and climbs on the back.</p><p> </p><p><a id="__DdeLink__353_576371344" name="__DdeLink__353_576371344"></a> =+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>The streets were crowded, disgruntled locals and eager tourists from all over the galaxy jostling together in a square that could barely hold them all. In the distance, snow-capped mountains became looming phantom shapes silhouetted by the setting sun in the coming blue hour. It was clear and cold, their breath puffing out in heavy ethereal clouds. Cheery festival lights twinkled, and music could be heard spilling out from speakers somewhere in the vast square.</p><p>Hist talks (incessantly) about podracing while they creep (aggressively) through traffic and hunt for parking. Mostly history, and highlights from past races, or maybe just his favorite races. Din only half listens, commenting only when socially appropriate, but Hist seems happy enough to fill his awkward silences.</p><p>Din’s been out of practice holding a conversation, anything he thinks to say skittering back to remain sequestered in his mouth.</p><p>He thinks he might have some half formed memory, lodged deep in the pit of his subconscious like one of only a few precious stone buried deep within un-mined ore. Watching a podrace with other children close to his age, and a few of the older, more grizzled Mandalorians of his tribe. A cheap blue flickering screen, an announcer yelling excitedly. A fiery crash and much cheering.</p><p>“—and in 35BBY at the Tatooine Boonta Eve Classic? Some fucking nine year old beat out everybody else and won the whole thing. Can you believe that shit? First human to ever win a podrace, so I guess that’s good for us, huh?”</p><p>They park and start making their way across the crowded square toward the low warehouse-like buildings where the podracers waited with their speeders before races would start. Where, if their luck has improved any, Keba Ggaansase would be, preferably also unaware of their coming. Their pace is leisurely, they’re not looking to draw any more eyes than necessary.</p><p>Din looks at the impressive ice sculpture in the square center, being <em>ooo'd</em> and <em>ahh’d</em> at by several small children, their little faces sticky with purple and blue sweet ice, eyes big and shining with delight. The sculpture is of a great twisting, snake-like beast with interlocking armor plates, and a vicious whip for a tail, lit all in green. Like some intestinal parasite had been suddenly granted limbs and long curling fingers. He looks away.</p><p>"Podracing’s a big deal here.” he instead observes, as if this is the first time he’s noticed, knowing it isn’t. Mostly just desperate for something to say.<br/><br/>“Understatement of the year right there.” Hist says, but it’s something closer to playful rather than unkind, “not much else to do around here, except get pissed about Gran politics and fuel rights,” He tilts his head, as if considering, “Cheap planet-made ammo’s a perk, rent’s cheap too, and the caf's not bad either, speaking of which, I'm getting one, and a snack, can I get you something?” he says in a rush.<br/><br/>“No, thank you.” Din said. They weren’t exactly here for pleasure but he wasn’t sure if Hist had ever gotten around to eating and didn’t think it wise to prevent him from doing so. Especially if he was potentially going to be relying on his abilities in the very near future.<br/><br/>“I can get you a straw?” Hist offers, “for your<em>—</em>” he motions to his face with a circular wave. The meaning is clear enough.<br/><br/>“I’m good, thanks.” It was the most charitable he’d been since their violent reunion, and Din felt a little bad rebuking the offer a second time.<br/><br/>Hist nods, “Suit yourself. Be right back” and he ducked over to a nearby street food kiosk.</p><p>Din found a relatively inconspicuous place to stand and wait. The square was busy, but for a very dangerous sport, the atmosphere was light-hearted and fairly family friendly. He sighs, watching the cloud of his breath halo out around his visor before dissipating into the night.</p><p>If he closed his eyes and thought about it, he almost feel the grasp of a tiny three fingered hand that wanted his attention, trying to tell him <em>I want to see! I want to see!</em> And Din would have shown him, would have let him touch the ice, would have bought him a snack and a flag or some other meaningless trinket, just to see him smile and laugh, but he can't do any of those things. Not now.</p><p>Probably not ever again.</p><p>Din feels suddenly outside himself. Sees himself, a man in Mandalorian armor standing out like a smashed thumb in a crowd of families, of regular people going about their lives. Moving among them as some unwelcome shadow of darker times, just as he had in the pharmacy and the grocery, reminding everyone who looked upon him of war, death, and loss.</p><p>He feels more than sees how out of place he is, how out of place they both are. Two smears of blacks, browns and greys. Dead colors. An untethered Mandalorian and an ex-convict, ex-mercenary, and former imperial sharpshooter. Whichever moniker Hist chose to remember as a past for himself, if he wanted to remember any of them at all.</p><p>If Din had been here with a child in his arms he felt he could have seen himself among these people. Anchoring him to their lives, their merriment. Now he can't seem to picture himself anywhere.</p><p>Hist returns with a caf in a paper travel cup and is taking large bites out of some flaky pastry filled with something fragrant and meaty.</p><p>“So what, you think Keba is working with this Choptu guy? Seemed shady as fuck when I spoke to him, had a bad vibe.” Hist asks swallowing another mouthful, then taking a deep gulp of caf, eating like he was trying to win a race of a different kind.</p><p>“Bad...vibe?”</p><p>“Yeah, like... his energy?” Hist shrugs, “You could just tell he was an asshole, but takes one to know one I guess,” he pauses and takes another big bite, scarfing down the rest of his pastry, “Mercs, bounty hunters, and criminals are usually the kind that want lessons anyway.”</p><p>“I think it’s likely.” Din says, considering the question, “that they're working together in some way, I mean. Trashing your unit over a podmod dispute is one thing, but<em>—</em>”<br/><br/>"—stealing my high end shit is entirely another, and unless he's planning on keeping them for himself, which I <em>highly</em> fucking doubt, he's got to have a source to re-sell.” Hist says, emphasizing with his hands the best he can with a cup of liquid in one hand and food in the other, “You can't sell that kind of firepower without attracting a lot of attention. It was a major pain just getting my shit down planetside with all the red tape I had to crawl through.”</p><p>“If they're working together, then it’s likely that Choptu would bet on Keba winning this race. Maybe he can secure his victory through illegal means.” Din speculates.</p><p>Hist whistles, “Maybe that's why he wanted a flamethrower or whatever the fuck it was he wanted me to install.” Another gulp of coffee, and he finishes the pastry off, “I know we could probably get our hands on the betting records pretty easily, but why bother?”</p><p>“We find him and ask him now? Could cut out a lot of work.” Din agrees.</p><p>“Those buildings are usually pretty guarded to keep people from sabotaging speeders.” Hist, said, gesturing to them with his cup of caf.</p><p>“You know a way in?”</p><p>Hist grins, and his smile is somehow equally unsettling as it is amiable, “Sure, they know me, I'm the maintenance and mods guy.”</p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>Flickering fires in cube-shaped firepits light their way to the Race Houses. A large wall of decorated transparisteel enables an easy view into a more accommodating space where racers dine, relax and mingle with each other. Through this window, Din knows they want to be seen and admired. <em>Envied</em>. Din could see gold twinkling lights, fireplaces, and many people from all corners of the galaxy seated at low tables. Dining cars and pretty twi’lek serving girls movied over blood-red carpeting like train cars on a track. When the door swings open ahead of them, Din can hear a bright burst of laughter, much chatter, and the clink of glassware like a heavy puff of air being released through an open vent. Then the door closes, leaving them again in quiet.</p><p>Hist leads along a narrow winding path away from the lively scene, and Din follows, knowing that they, or more specifically Din in a suit of beskar, have already drawn many eyes.</p><p>The pretty, luxurious building is not their destination, at least not yet. They will not go in through that door, instead entering where it had already been deemed easiest: he other connected building where many snowspeeders and repulsorcrafts sit waiting patiently for midnight. The distant hour when their riders would return to them and pilot them across a wild and unforgiving terrain.</p><p>Perhaps to victory, or perhaps only to a violent, burning end. A burst of light in the great swath of darkness, blazing bright enough to be briefly glimpsed from a low orbit.</p><p>Din slows to a stop, snow squeaking beneath his feet, because the tracking fobb in his pocket has become more noticeable, beeping faster now, much faster then he’d expected. Like some small furred thing cheeping in distress at being snatched in the claw of his gloved hand.</p><p>“Hist,” Din says, more like an exclamation than any kind of name, and the ex-merc looks back at him, questioning, his face only half illuminated by the border of flames.</p><p>“I think he's here.” Din says.</p><p>Hist’s eyebrows fly up, “Who? Choptu? Here now?” he asks all at once.</p><p>Din holds up the beeping fobb as proof.</p><p>“<em>Kriff</em>.” Hist says quietly, and absently thumbs the blaster holstered over his heart as if reaching for reassurance that it was still there.</p><p>There’s a stocky male twi’lek at the door, dressed in fine clothes, but standing with the self-confidence of a club bouncer. Hist greets him like a friend, apparently familiar with him.</p><p>“Telto! Hey bud, any chance we could skip in for a few? We won’t be long, I’m just showing my guy here a couple of these higher end mods that’ll be out on the track later tonight,” Hist glances back at Din then who nods in greeting.</p><p>“Hist, hello... what happened to your face?” Telto asks in a rough voice.</p><p>“Slipped on the ice outside my unit last night, can you fucking believe it? Twisted my knee, almost smashed my karking head in.” Hist laughs then and is utterly transformed into someone Din is suddenly struggling to recognize. Someone who’s friendly and welcoming, easy to like, and his laughter and easy-going manner are natural enough that it pulls the twi’lek in with it.</p><p>“I landed on my wrist and busted it like a clown! Now I got this fucking goopy shit all over my arm, it’s fucking <em>embarrassing</em>!” Telto laughs right along with him, sharp fangs just barely peeking out and eyes crinkling in his momentary mirth. Din stands there, feeling out of place, unsure if he should laugh or not, unsure if he should attempt to even fake it. This kind of play-acting had never come easily to him, but he had always secretly admired it when others made it look easy.</p><p>
  <em>Just another snake, slithering back into a den of snakes.</em>
</p><p>“My landlady will be getting it from me later, <em>a</em><em>nyway</em>, Mando here’s interested in a little mod-work by yours truly, and all my best examples are shut up in here,” Hist says to the guard, “think we could poke around for a few minutes?”</p><p>Telto hesitates, looking uncertain, “I shouldn’t, but if you’re quick—”</p><p>“Thanks kid, I owe ya one.” Hist says winking and giving a companionable tap to the twi’lek’s arm.</p><p>And just like that, they’re inside. The light is low, but not enough to trigger his HUD into nightvision mode. Speeders sit like jeweled beetles, lit by singular spotlights from above. Each speeder allocated its own private sun to illuminate the curves and glossy enamel paint jobs in a pleasingly aesthetic glow. It’s surreal, almost dreamlike in the way the rows of bikes stretch down almost further than the eye can see, like they’re surrounded on every side by high-end crafts. It’s only then Din realizes that one of the walls is a vast mirror, reflecting them and all within back upon itself, and that they aren’t quite alone inside.</p><p>Hist keeps the farce going, quickly spotting the other people milling about nearby admiring the speeders and glancing at them occasionally. “What you wanna see is over here my friend, those curb cutters you were looking for? Prime example right here on Gasgano’s speeder, see?” Hist points out some convoluted metal contraption that Din cant quite comprehend.</p><p>Din’s quiet for a minute, trying to understand what he’s looking at and what would be appropriate to say, quiet just long enough for the dug woman with her escort to glance back at them, and for Hist to raise his eyebrows at him in a <em>you’re killing me</em>, kind of way.</p><p>Din, already feeling foolish blurts, “O-oh yeah, <em>wow,</em>” and only feels even more like an idiot, based on the dumbfounded look Hist is giving him. His face burns, and he’s grateful no one can actually see him.</p><p>The ex-merc recovers quickly, laughing, “Right? Oh! and if you like that? You’ll <em>really</em> like this<em>—” </em>and he tugs Din’s elbow briefly to lead him away from the other visitors. While they walk away from their company, he launches into an in depth expose about what he’s capable of making, and what’s on showcase here. The people nearby lose interest in them quickly and they escape to an unoccupied area without much notice.</p><p>“What the <em>fuck</em> Mando?” Hist spits. Gone is the smiling, easy going person that existed only seconds ago, “Is it mentally beyond you to pretend to give a shit about speeders for two fucking minutes?”</p><p>“Sorry, I wasn’t<em>—</em>” Din flounders. <em>Kriff. I wasn’t expecting to pretend to be a person, to have to interact with anyone in any meaningful way.</em></p><p>“I’m off my game.” he says lamely.</p><p>“Yeah, and <em>I’m</em> the one with the fucking concussion,” He says furiously, “Let me know if you’re gonna fucking freeze up on me again because I’ll just tell everyone you’re deaf, cause I’m not gonna swoop in and cover your ass again.”</p><p>Din says nothing, and they walk among the parked repulsorcrafts, looking for an easy side door that might admit them into the lounge and enable them to find their quarry.</p><p>It seemed, suddenly, that it might not even come to that.</p><p>Ahead, there was darkly shadowed doorway that appeared to lead to some unused portion of the warehouse, and through that doorway, raised voices could be heard drifting out to them.</p><p>In Din’s hand, the fobb beeps frantically, his claws tightening their grip around its glowing red heart.</p><p>Din and Hist go quiet at the same time, in that agreeable way only those trained for combat can, and Din switches on the infrared in his HUD to get a better idea of what they’re dealing with. He can make out four, warm organic shapes glowing like flames through the wall, and his display tells him that at least one matches the ID of Choptu that he’d loaded into it just four days ago.</p><p>Din switches the fobb off, having no more need for it, and it dies in his palm, it’s red scurrying heart gone still.</p><p>“It’s him.” Din whispers and Hist has a blaster in his good left hand, quick as blinking. He peers around the dark doorway only just, and gets a quick look at the layout Din has already memorized.</p><p>There were two more Houk bodyguards they'd have to subdue very quickly if they were going to have a chance of pulling this off without drawing too much attention. Din catches Hist’s eye and whsipers “Left,” and Hist nods, satisfied with that.</p><p>The arguing is quiet, but Din make out a few choice words; <span>firearms, creds, </span><em>Mandalorian.</em></p><p>“On three.” Din says quietly, and Hist nods, takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, blinks a few times.</p><p>“Two.” They’re both quiet and breathing slow, almost relaxed now.</p><p>“One.”</p><p>They move at the same time, crossing the threshold of the doorway and Din can only briefly see the surprised face of his Houk guard on the right, before his blaster fire drops him. To his left he can hear another shot and another thud, assumes Hist is successful as well but doesn’t look to confirm.</p><p>He’s busy.</p><p>Choptu and, pleasingly, Keba are both here, and they’re shocked by the quickness of the attack, and that makes them waste precious seconds they could have spent escaping.</p><p>Din deploys a steel cable and it hooks Noibbyl Choptu around the knees and brings him to the floor like a sack of potatoes. He strikes the ground with a <em>whuff</em> as all the air is knocked from his lungs, the blaster in his hand gone clattering across the floor and Din is on him, boot on his head, the nikto’s red beard rubbing into the dirty floor, and wrenching his arms back, locking him in cuffs.</p><p><em>It’s done</em>. Four chances to check the comm and a paycheck, but there was one last thread, one more in the room yet unaccounted for<em>—</em></p><p>“Hey buddy!” Hist says brightly, and he’s appeared, almost materialized out of thin air at Keba’s side pressing the barrel of his blaster hard against the side of dug’s skull, stopping the racer’s escape before it could really begin.</p><p>“What<em>—</em> what <em>is </em>this?” Choptu speaks first, twisting his head against the bottom of Din’s boot.</p><p>“There's a bounty on your head.” Din says tightly, by way of explanation.</p><p>“<em>Who</em>?!”</p><p>“Boba Fett.” Din says and watches the nikto’s green spiked face pale to something closer to pistachios. “I see you’re familiar with the name.” Din says, and Choptu says nothing at all.</p><p>“No bounty on you though,” Hist says to Keba, sounding pleased, “this is a little closer to my heart, <em>personal</em> you might say.”</p><p>All at once, Din feels stupid for not having recognized the other man’s anger.</p><p>“<span>Hist! My </span><em>friend— </em>” Keba wheezes in basic, and Hist bares his teeth in a snarl, any seemingly good humor wiped right off his face.</p><p>“<em>Where’s</em> my <em>shit</em>?” Hist bites, and he steps back a ways then, smiling again with his blaster trained on the Dug racer’s face, steady as a durasteel beam.</p><p>He leans forward a little when Keba doesn’t speak, the dug only holding up his hands, still but for his trembling, “You sell it? <em>Huh</em>?” Hist shrugs, tilting his head a little, “This your fucking side gig because big race win creds aren’t enough now?”<br/><br/>“<span>No, no, is</span><em> Choptu—” </em><span>Keba says, trying to point at the nikto </span><span>Din is kneeling on</span><span> who is still silent, disbelief writ all over his face. </span><em>No honor among thieves.</em></p><p>“<span>I don’t give a </span><span>fuck</span><span> about him, I’m asking </span><em>you</em><span>.” Hist says, then he sighs, </span>“You know, I thought I could spend <em>one</em> night in a nowhere bar without feeling like some crazy blaster waving motherfucker was gonna put a crispy fried hole through my skull, but I guess that was my fucking mistake, huh?”</p><p>“Hist.” Din says then, warning.</p><p>Hist glances at him, but only briefly.</p><p>Hist watches while Keba uncinches a bag tied to his waist with one slow hand, and lets it drop to the floor, kicking it over. It’s full of credits.</p><p>“<em>Take it, please take it</em>.” Keba says, switching to Dug.</p><p>“Are you trying to tell me you’ve fucking sold everything already? And my pills?” Hist grits his teeth, and gets in Keba’s face, “Is that what you are <em>fucking</em> telling me?”</p><p><br/>Blood is dripping out of Hist’s nose and runs down over his mouth and down his chin in a long red stream. Keba looks at it, startled, and Hist blinks a few times, leans back a bit, and swipes at the stream with the back of his gloved fist. He glances down at his hand briefly, and that’s all it takes.</p><p>Keba kicks at him, catching him in the chest, and Hist loses his balance, falling back to the floor with a cry. Keba up to run is up and starting to run, in his panic he goes right by Din who is already standing, already moving at the same time, ready to throw another cable and<em>—</em></p><p><span>A shot rings out and Keba’s head splits apart like an overripe melon, sending blue stained chunks of viscera in a hundred different directions. Keba’s corpse topples to the floor inelegantly, and Din sees Hist sitting up from the floor, arm outstretched and a smoking slugthrower in his hand. </span><br/><br/>“Fucking asshole.” He mutters, slowly getting to his feet.<br/><br/>Din sighs, breath whooshing out of him all at once. "You didn't have to kill him,” he says, voice gone rough, “I would've gotten him."<br/><br/>"Well you didn't get him last time, and maybe I'm a little tired of getting fucked over by loose ends." the ex-merc growls at him.<br/><br/>“So much for a clean chain code.” Din says, and he’s unsure if he even means to say it aloud.<br/><br/>“Only a matter of time, right?” Hist says, a little too brightly, says it like this was somehow all pre-ordained by some uncaring god. Expected. <em>Inevitable.</em><br/><br/>Din’s not sure why he keeps talking, feels like he has to, like <em>this</em> shouldn’t just be left at <em>that—</em> "It doesn't have to be like that." Din says, tries to insist.<br/><br/>"Yeah? Maybe, maybe not, maybe go <em>fuck </em>yourself,” Hist says, wiping at his streaming nose. It’s probably not a good sign, the bleeding, Din thinks, but doesn’t interrupt him when he keeps talking, “don't talk like you're fucking <em>better</em> than me, <em>Din</em>.” and the way Hist says his name is like he’s taking a bite out of the air, clenching his teeth around something soft and far too giving, “Like you think you’re all done killing, like you didn’t just kill fucking <em>yesterday, </em><span>like you didn’t just kill a few moments ago, like you aren’t intending to </span><em>keep</em><span> killing.”</span></p><p>Hist’s eyes land on Din then, and he feels pinned by those eyes, a womprat in front of a rock viper. Most people didn’t like making direct eye contact with the helmet Din had learned over the course of his life living this way. The eye tended to dart around, like most people could never quite decide or figure out what they should be looking at, but when Hist decides to look at him, his eyes are diamond tipped, slicing right through his helmet like it was paper. Blood smears his mouth and chin, gone black in the low blue light, and his icy blue eyes have gone glassy and bright, the light from outside hitting just right to make his eyes glow like he’s been lit up from within by the crackling shock of a live wire.</p><p>“You think all that death-grease washes off your shiny Beskar?” Hist asks, and Din almost doesn’t want to look at him, but can’t quite bring himself to look away, “Well guess what, it fucking doesn’t.” he says, and Hist looks away then, finally, releasing Din from the cage of his haunted gaze.</p><p>“As if nobody’s ever fucked up your life and made you hate em enough to kill em." Hist says, and wobbles unsteadily, wiping another dollop of blood from his streaming nose on the back of his sleeve, “Every day that goes by and I don’t kill someone for fucking me over? I should get thrown my own goddamn Life Day parade.”</p><p><br/>“Hist<em>.</em>“ Din says, not sure if what he's going to say exactly but<em>—</em></p><p>Hist sighs, sounding tired all of a sudden, all the anger having burnt out of him, leaving him a quiet shade of what he’d been just moments ago, “Just call me Migs ok? I don't want to hear that fucking nickname anymore.” he says quietly, and it doesn’t almost sound like begging.</p><p>“Migs.” Din says.</p><p>Migs looks at him again, and the expression on his face is something foreign, completely unreadable, but all of it culminating into something that Din could at least recognize as <em>bad</em>. He wobbles again and Din reaches out a hand to steady him this time, but Migs leans away, darting out of reach like a dog that doesn't want to be pet.<br/><br/>“I’m fine!” he snaps, blinking rapidly, furrowing his brow and sniffing, glancing at his bloodied hand again, “I’m fine, just keep your fucking hands off me.”</p><p>“We need to leave.” Din says, instead of anything else he could have said, painfully aware again of the silent bounty beneath his boot. The unwilling third wheel to whatever this was.</p><p>“Then let’s fucking go.”</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Small Victories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Bit shorter chapter this time because I got impatient to update, and a little late because I'm slower than the wrath of god.</p><p>And yeah I changed the title ¯\_(ツ)_/¯</p><p>Thanks for reading!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>They hotwire a speeder bike that’s conveniently parked outside the warehouse, because of course they do.</p><p>"Cover our six." Din says, and Migs goes along with it because he doesn't really want to drive anymore anyway. Probably shouldn't, since he feels like he's a step or two behind himself, wading through waist deep water and struggling to catch up.</p><p>Distant shouting grows louder as Din cranks the engine over, only to drift away to somewhere far behind them as they make their escape, speeding in a twisting angle before evening out over the fluorescent white strip of racetrack, across the finish line, then darting fast into the dark snow frosted treeline. </p><p>The speeder is predictably shitty because of course it is, snow spraying out from beneath and hammering their faces like sand while the engine shrieks like someone's been pouring quadanium steel shavings into the fuel combustion chamber. Migs tries not to give a shit because it's not like it's his problem or his job to fix it, but old habits did indeed die hard. </p><p>The ride is also uncomfortably cramped, especially now that the nikto bounty, Noibyll Choptu, is wedged in between them and bitching and moaning the whole time:</p><p>“Listen, the race is only a couple of hours away.” Choptu says, squirming around in the seat and nearly nailing Migs in the face with his spiky fucking head.</p><p>“Yep.” Din says, probably too busy avoiding trees and trying not to kill them to weigh in on the conversation in any meaningful way.</p><p>“<em> And </em>?” Migs prompts after a beat.</p><p>“Well, if we’re going to be on-world anyway, why can’t we just— ”</p><p>“We aren’t planning on sticking around.” Din says, and there’s that <em>we</em>, like Migs had already agreed to this, this whatever it was that had him running a bounty with a Mandalorian and all of his worldly possessions stuffed into the cozy belly of a flying metal dumpster, but <em>ah</em> <em>fuck</em>, maybe he had and just didn’t fucking remember because he’d had his head caved in.</p><p>“But, listen, hey, my friends,” Choptu leans forward smiling and attempts to gesticulate his shackled hands in an amiable manner, “I have a lot of credits tied up in this, if we could only— ”</p><p>“Hey, yeah!” Migs says brightly, smiling “Maybe we can watch it later, I’ll get some beers and we’ll queue it up on the big holo projector!”</p><p>Choptu’s eyes dart warily from the back of Din’s shiny helmet to Migs. He smiles with a nervous hope, “Y-yeah?”</p><p>The grin drops from Migs face quicker than blinking, “No you kriffing idiot! We’re not your fucking friends!” Migs snaps.</p><p>There’s no more race talk after that.</p><p>Their mystery pursuers don’t take long to re-materialize some distance behind them on speeders of their own, red and white lights following them like the disembodied orbs of some vengeful spirit hunting them in the dark. Din curses something foul in a language Migs doesn’t recognize or understand, but likes the sound of anyway.</p><p>Muscle memory and training kicks in and Migs is aiming his blaster into the spread of trees behind them, tracking the approaching targets. He can see the shapes rapidly taking form, but can’t quite get a clear visual on just who was approaching. Human, dug, twi'lek, he couldn't tell. He winces, squints and rubs his face, marveling at the state of himself and how everything just seems to <em> hurt </em> now. His vision was always good before, better than good actually, one of the few decent physical attributes he had to count on, but now he can’t seem to focus on anything without it blurring or doubling or hurting.</p><p>He supposes it doesn’t much matter who they were as long as they were the enemy, but he hopes that none of them are Telto. The twi’lek security guard was one of few truly decent guys Migs knew on this wretched purple rock. He didn't deserve to be shot, but he was usually smart enough to keep his lekku out of shit this dicey anyway.</p><p>Telto had a nice mouth too. A nice mouth with intriguingly sharp teeth. Not that Migs would likely ever see him again to continue appreciating it.</p><p>The approaching lights seem brighter than they’re supposed to be and every inch of him feels rough and raw, over-sensitized like he’d scrubbed himself down with a wire brush before taking a dip in ice water. He tries to hold his left hand steady, and it’s a little shittier than his right—and he’s going to laser saw this fucking nasty-ass cast off at first opportunity—but he thinks he gets everything lined up well enough, fires his blaster—</p><p>— and misses his target for the first time in probably ten years.</p><p>Migs clenches his jaw until he hears his teeth creak in warning, unaccountably pissed.</p><p>Returning blaster fire is streaking toward them like red spears in the dark, and Choptu and Migs are currently a couple of big dumb targets. For a weapons trafficker and criminal, Choptu is annoyingly slow to react. Migs gets his hand around the back of the guy’s neck and shoves him down so they’re at least somewhat protected by the low metal shelf that made up the speeder’s back seat.</p><p>“Hey idiot! First lesson of that class I canceled? Don’t get fucking <em> shot </em>!” he snaps.</p><p>“Fett will do worse to me than that!” Choptu says miserably.</p><p>Migs is already firing back, hoping that if Din wasn’t gonna help shoot he could at least drive well enough to get them the fuck out of this situation. “If I don’t find out what happened to my slugthrowers I might just save him the trouble.” he says.</p><p>“Migs.” Din says his name like it’s a warning, the helmet tipped back a little, but Migs doesn’t care. He ignores him, feeling a prickle of dark pleasure at his own childish pettiness and doesn’t take his hand off the bounty’s neck.</p><p>“Hey,” Migs says, tapping Choptu’s spiky head with the end of his blaster, “my <em> guns </em>?”</p><p>The nikto sighs raggedly, “Sold. Gone offworld yesterday. You have some of the profit.”</p><p>Migs had almost forgotten about the bag of mixed creds he’d snatched off Keba’s corpse. It wasn’t nearly enough to equal the value of what had been stolen from him, but it was “better than a sharp stick in the eye” as his ma always used to say.</p><p>The woods are ominously dark in that way that felt like they were waiting for something awful to happen. He finds it horribly unnerving and suddenly wishes he were anywhere else. It was like something ragged, burning and hungry wanted to claw its gnarled hands inside him and snatch some intrinsic part of him away. </p><p>“Do you know where, or who?” Migs asks, not looking at him now, eyes sweeping wildly around the dark forest, looking for any sign of more speeder lights, or any other half-formed mystery threat.</p><p>Despite the cold, he finds that he's sweating buckets.</p><p>Choptu shook his head, blinking nervously, “No, and I had no idea they had been yours, nor who they’ve now gone to, they were only brought to me by Keba to be sold and he took a cut.”</p><p>“Pretty convenient story, especially since he's dead now, huh?”</p><p>“I swear to you, it’s the truth!”</p><p>“Is it?” Migs squeezes the back of his neck a little harder, pushing the blaster more firmly against the side of his head. Choptu is looking at the back of the Mando helmet then back at Migs, hoping for… Migs doesn’t know what exactly, help? Mercy? He doesn’t really give a shit, but he supposes that between the two of them, the nikto really only had two shitty options: a pissed off ex-mercenary who kind of wanted to shoot him, and a Mandalorian who had very, very recently been grinding a boot into his head.</p><p>“I swear it, I swear, <em> please </em>-”</p><p>Ok, so he believes the guy, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less pissed off.</p><p>“Migs.” Din says again.</p><p>“<em> What </em>?” Migs growls.</p><p>“Fett wants him alive,” Din says, “we don’t need another body.”</p><p>“Lucky you!” Migs says to Choptu brightly, with a slap on the back, “luckier than fucking Keba that’s for damn sure.” and Choptu looks almost sick with relief.</p><p>Migs is getting more than a little sick of Din being so fucking <em> nice </em>. He's pretty maxed out on his better-than-thou bullshit hypocrisy too. What an absolute fucking joke. Like he hadn’t just killed two more Houk bodyguards less than twenty minutes ago—what, were they three for the price of one or something?— like he wasn’t a fucking Bounty Hunter who caught and killed people for a living.</p><p>“You wanna know why I fucking shot him?” Migs shouts over the speeder’s roar, picking up the thread of the conversation he decided they hadn’t finished, “He trashed my unit, and he stole from me! That fucker’s been spitting on me and looking down on me since we met, <em> and </em> he kicked my droid!”</p><p>A turn of his head, a silent acknowledgment maybe. The helmet looks strange in the dark, almost liquid like with the reflections of distant lights rolling over the shiny surface like stars wheeling by in hyperspace, and still the fucker says nothing. </p><p>It was a common courtesy to at least respond in some way when someone was talking to you, but Din seemed to have missed the memo on that. Well, it wasn’t like Migs needed anybody to actually listen to him or even answer in order to keep himself talking.</p><p>“He fucked up everything I had going. You know how long it took me to get what I had here?” he says, indignant, “Months, Mando! And don't pretend you haven't killed people for less!” Migs knows he’s trying to maybe justify it to himself a little bit. Knows his body had made the decision to pull the trigger ahead of his brain and he’d just been a bystander, watching it all happen. </p><p>Just like with Valin Hess, and <em> god </em>, to think of him now, even knowing he was dead, knowing that he had sent him to Hell with his own hand, still made Mugs feel as though his guts were full of cold, writhing snakes.</p><p>Still, Din didn't say anything. Now he was <em> really </em> getting mad.</p><p>“You have any idea how much that fucking <em> heater </em> cost?!” he shouts, voice arcing up an octave in his anger, “how expensive it is just to fucking <em> live </em>?!”</p><p>“I don’t think he wants to talk to you.” Choptu quietly cuts in, and Migs glares at him, lips pulled back over his teeth.</p><p>“I don’t remember asking for your input.” He says tersely, instead of giving into the almost overwhelming impulse to put a slug in the guy’s head and kick his corpse off the speeder, leaving him to rot away to bones in the silent woods, Mandalorians be damned.</p><p>“If you’re done, we’ve got more trouble coming.” Din says calmly, and Migs wonders if he’d survive the ensuing speeder crash if he just shot them both.</p><p>Instead he picks himself up, gets right in Din’s space and uses his beskar-clad shoulder as a convenient perch to steady his shot. Din’s entire body turns solid at the presumably unwanted touch, carbonite gas condensing in an instant. Migs recognizes— remembers maybe, because he never saw his face, but he <em> saw </em>— that people getting into his space makes him uncomfortable. Recognizes, but can’t bring himself to care. Serves him right for not keeping his hands to himself earlier.</p><p>Migs fires at the oncoming target and hits a headlight, judging by the shattering sound and the sudden loss of one of the haloed white lights, but he was really aiming for the fucker’s head. His eyes hurt and his nose felt dry and sore where blood had dried and frozen to his face. He quickly shoots again and decides to instead go for where he knows the repulsor engine is, this time hitting his mark. The speeder loses its anti-gravity and eats into the ground, crashing and flipping over somewhere to the right of them, but hey, maybe the guy didn’t die.</p><p>
  <em> See asshole? I can be good too. </em>
</p><p>Immediately, he ducks behind the convenient wall the Mandalorian makes, the returning blaster fire sparking and plinking violently off the beskar armor like hail stones out of an angry sky. Din grunts and his whole body jerks with the hits, but it doesn’t seem like he’s actually getting hurt. </p><p>Migs could admit it, Beskar was pretty fucking spectacular.</p><p>Sitting behind him like this, Migs can see a slight curl of too-long brown hair peeking from under the helmet and a sliver of neck, and doesn’t immediately know what to do or think about this. Maybe that makes him mad too. He acknowledges that he doesn’t feel very good right now, he’s been ignoring something like a headache or something worse trying to take shape in the general vicinity of his skull. He knows pain just makes him mean, he <em> knows </em> this, but he lets it snatch the controls anyway.</p><p>“Hey <em> Mando </em>!” he shouts over the roar of the speeder. </p><p>The silver helmet tilts back, <em> fucking finally— </em>“What?”</p><p>“What makes you think you got the moral fucking high ground over me?!” Migs sees the quick defeated slump of his shoulders and catches the heavy sigh through the helmet's voice modulator.</p><p>“I don’t think that.”</p><p>“Fucking right you don’t.” but it really wasn’t good enough was it? Migs was pissed, and it wasn't gonna just go away with a few placating words.</p><p>“You know what your problem is?” Migs asks, and swallows a snarl when Din doesn’t answer again.</p><p>He’s been white-knuckling the edge of Din’s jetpack or whatever the thing is with his only good hand to make sure his ass stays in the kriffing seat, because <em> fuck </em> , they are going fast. He can barely hold a blaster in his fucking right hand—he really needs to laser-saw this stupid cast off at first opportunity—but Din’s been fucking ignoring him, so, juggling his blaster, he manages to grasp a sprig of soft brown hair in-between his pinky and ring finger and just fucking <em> yanks </em>.</p><p>There’s something rewarding in the way Din's shoulders both jump in surprise and shoot up to his ears, like plucking a patch of soft fur behind the shoulder blades of a lothcat just to see it twitch.</p><p>“What.” A statement more than a question, he sounds surprised, pissed maybe, but that's better than nothing.</p><p>“I said, do you know what your <em> problem </em> is?” Migs asks again. Frost is forming on the edges of Beskar in the wind and light snow. His hands were getting cold and stiff, and he should’ve worn better gloves, but he had more mobility in the fingerless cutoffs.</p><p>Din sighs again, “What's my problem?”</p><p>“You get dumped with a little kid, and you think all of a sudden you’re better than the rest of us, that you're some kind of fucking Saint now with better morals.”</p><p>“I don't—”</p><p>Migs doesn’t let him finish, doesn’t care. “Well guess what? You’re still the same killer asshole, except now you just got more to <em> lose, </em>and you're just trying to keep your number from coming up, same as the rest of us.”</p><p>Din doesn’t say anything after that, but the way he tenses up is answer enough for Migs. </p><p>They drive for a while, trying to put some real distance between themselves and the city before they can presumably start making their way back again. They take sharp turn after sharp turn to keep their pursuers far behind them, eventually losing them. The woods are dark and eerie, silent but for the low roar of the repulsor engine. They cross another bright white stripe of race track, and a set of lights flare up a bright migraine red at the borders. </p><p>Wait. <em> Dank farrik! </em></p><p>“Hey Mando! Every time you cross the racetrack it triggers some kind of alarm!”</p><p>The helmet snaps to the side then back to watching where he was going again, “Are you serious?”</p><p>“Uh, <em> yeah </em>.”</p><p>“You didn’t think to mention this earlier?”</p><p>“I’m telling you right now, asshole!” Migs shouts.</p><p>"Does it tell them where we are?"</p><p>It takes a frustratingly long time for Migs to remember how the race mechanics work, and the whole time Choptu looks like he wants to pipe up, but wisely decides to keep his mouth shut. "I don't know.” Migs says eventually, angry with himself, “it might just be an indicator for a barrier cross penalty or something while the race is going, but I think they'd be able to see where it pings on a track map."</p><p>“They can see it!” Choptu cuts in, “It’s—”</p><p>“Shut the fuck <em> up </em> please!” Migs snaps, voice high with irritation, “I’m asking you nicely!”</p><p>Din nods, absorbing this information.</p><p>Din turns the speeder and back in the direction of the city and the spaceport, carefully avoiding crossing over any more racetrack. </p><p>Migs can see more speeder lights glinting in the woods ahead, but before he can shout in warning, Din whips the speeder into a thicker crop of trees and kills the lights and engine. </p><p>They sit in silence, trees looming over them like dark figures made grey and indistinct by shining moonlight, and Migs feels something like claustrophobia trying to make itself known in his throat, and he's thinking about—trying <em> not </em> to think about—another cold place gone grey and dead. Speeders roar by, and keep on going, the sound startles him a little. All the anger and adrenaline is fading in the quiet dark, and Migs realizes he's shivering. The bounty Choptu is shivering too, and there's really no telling how long they've just been sitting here with nothing but the creak of trees and their breathing, because it feels like time’s left them behind. </p><p>Din isn't shivering, barely looks alive at all sitting as still as a boneyard statue, and the Mando armor <em> must </em> have some kind of temp control heating system in it or he'd be just as cold and miserable as they were. <em> Lucky bastard </em>. The beskar feels almost warm under Migs' numbing fingers, and he wants to curl his hands into it, curl his whole fucking body into it, maybe even rest his head and eyes for a minute, but after another handful of hours, moments, eons, the speeder is awake again and they're lurching forward into the dark.</p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>The long cold walk back from the woods where they'd ditched the speeder to where Din's metal hunk of shit was parked was made all the longer by Choptu once more begging for a chance to either watch the race, or bribe them out of delivering him to Boba Fett, and it was getting on Migs' last shredded thread of a nerve.</p><p>"Listen, <em> please </em> listen, it’s less than an hour, until the start. So much happens in the first few minutes that can determine the course of the race!” Choptu says desperately.</p><p>"Can you <em> please </em> shut the fuck up? You're embarrassing yourself." Migs says, sick and fucking tired of hearing him bitch.</p><p>"I have thousands, <em> hundreds </em> of thousands of credits on this race, not just Keba, I covered all my bases, first place, second, <em> third </em>—"</p><p>“Yeah, thousands of creds that you got flipping <em> my </em> personal fucking property,” Migs turns to Din furiously, "You sure Fett wants him alive? How about in ten pieces?" </p><p>Din sighs, propelling Choptu forward by the elbow at a steady pace, "Alive."</p><p>“I can <em> pay </em> you. Whatever Boba Fett is offering, I can double, no, triple it!"</p><p>“And your stolen fucking creds are all currently tied up in a mountain of speeder bets? As you've been constantly telling us?” Migs asks.</p><p>“Well, <em> yes </em> but—”</p><p>“Then you don’t have any credits,” Din says, disinterested, “This is non-negotiable. Don’t make it any harder on yourself than it needs to be.”</p><p>The ship's ramp opened with the miserable, dying screech of grinding metal. Migs just looks at Din, "You really live like this, huh?" and Din, who could still somehow exude a bizarre expressiveness despite being covered head to toe in beskar with his face hidden by a helmet, appeared to be visibly wincing.</p><p>E91 is at the top of the ramp to greet them, and Migs feels his mood improve significantly, "Hey! You stay out of trouble?" he holsters his blaster and reaches down to pick the little droid up, inspecting him while he <em> brrr </em>’d happily. </p><p>“A Mando’s not gonna betray another Mando, birds of a fucking feather and all that. Best quit while you’re ahead.” Migs says to Choptu, smiling, and he knows it’s a mean kind of ugly smile, rather than anything meant to be reassuring.</p><p>Choptu just looks at Migs pleadingly, which was admittedly hilarious and also a little pathetic because Migs had already threatened him more than once, had shot and killed his business partner, and hadn’t been feeling particularly merciful for much of the evening, but maybe a recognizeably humanoid face is still less scary to the guy than a fucking walking tank with no real face to speak of. </p><p>At least, not a face he could see, and one Migs definitely hadn’t already seen, but he digressed.</p><p>“Don’t look at me pal, he’s the nice one.” Migs says tipping his head in Din’s direction. </p><p>Din just stares blankly at Choptu, shrugs, and says "Enjoy." before shoving him into the carbonite chamber where the guy shrieks for exactly five seconds before he hardens into a sad, silent, but easily transportable humanoid brick.</p><p>Yeah. <em> Real </em> nice.</p><p>"Fucking finally," Migs says, "Thought I was gonna have a fucking aneurysm."</p><p>“You got some compensation, even though it’s not the full value of what was stolen.” Din says, tapping a few keys on the wall that began moving the carbonite rectangle that was Choptu into a storage compartment in the wall. </p><p>“Yeah, thanks for that I guess.” The droid’s wheels were spinning, making that whirring sound like he wanted to be put down, but Migs didn't want to just yet. He watches Din ease the ramp door closed with some slow pushes of the closing mechanism in an unsuccessful attempt to mitigate the awful noise. This ship really was just a sad lump of shit.</p><p>“We both know you could have done this job without me.” Migs says in the ensuing quiet.</p><p>Din isn’t looking at him, but Migs can hear him release a breath, “Probably, yeah.”</p><p>“Then why’d you ask me?” It had been bothering him a bit, the general pointlessness of his own involvement in this whole shitshow. It wasn’t like the Mandalorian couldn’t handle himself against multiple, dangerous targets. Migs had seen firsthand, a bit too close for comfort you could say, that he was more than capable.</p><p>“You knew the area, the people in it.” Din says.</p><p>"So? You had a fobb. I only sped up the inevitable.”</p><p>“You’d been wronged.” Din says, so matter of factly, “and you deserved a chance to make it right.”</p><p>Migs laughs at that, “Yeah, putting a slug in Keba’s head really fixed all my problems,” a beat, then, "Why, did you think you <em> owed </em> me or something?”</p><p>“Like I said before, not trying to make your life harder, just trying to help and return a favor.”</p><p>More self-righteous bullshit. "Yeah, well, I didn't ask for your help."</p><p>"Doesn't mean you didn't deserve to be helped."</p><p>It's suddenly hard to breath, hard to swallow, and Migs can’t say anything at all in response to that. He feels exhausted, wanting nothing more than to crawl into his bunk and rot there for a hundred years. He sets E91 down on the floor where he beeps and busies himself by running along the edges of the closer hatch door, happily vacuuming up newly accumulated dirt and dust.</p><p>Must be nice to be happy doing something so fucking simple.</p><p>There’s a hydraulic hiss and a click, and Migs turns to look, watches speechless as Din lifts the helmet off with a soft sigh, and wipes a hand over his face once, firmly, before propping the helmet against his hip like it’s a basket of laundry or something equally mundane. He doesn’t look at Migs, only busies himself, almost deliberately, with putting his blasters away in the wall compartment he’s opened.</p><p>Migs feels like he shouldn't be looking, like he'd be willingly committing a sin if he did, but it was hard, nigh impossible, not to steal glance after glance after glance. He felt like a greasy little rat for looking, a rat having stumbled upon something fresh and unspoiled in the expanse of an endless dumpster, gorging himself greedily on it.</p><p>"That’s it then?" Migs says, folding his cold hands into his armpits in an attempt to warm them. He hasn’t taken his coat off and doesn’t want to. The ship wasn’t very warm.</p><p>The face that looks back at him is almost alien in its dreamy unfamiliarity, yet so, so human. Mustache and all.</p><p>"What?" Din says, and there's a sweet confusion in his face that makes Migs think of soft, dumb creatures caught in the bright glare of narrowing highbeams.</p><p>"Thought you couldn't wear all that shit anymore after taking the helmet off, but you still do." Migs says, freeing one hand to gesture at the Beskar.</p><p>"It's what I've always done." Din says with a comical raise of his eyebrows, and it's not really a good explanation.</p><p>"So what, you change the rules now?"</p><p>"No, I just met other, different Mandalorians."</p><p>"Like Fett?"</p><p>"Yes, and others.” Din’s gaze was dark, meteor heavy, “Besides, you've already seen my face."</p><p>"I didn't see <em> shit </em>." Migs hisses. He didn't want to think about that day on Morak ever again for the rest of his shitty fucking life.</p><p>"You did." Din insists.</p><p>"So what if I did?" he counters, nervous, "if you were gonna kill me over it you would have done it already, right?"</p><p>Din huffs a laugh that changes his face in ways Migs didn’t think was possible, but before he can ask what Din finds so fucking funny he says, "You asked me that when we met in the cantina."</p><p>
  <em> The kriff? </em>
</p><p>"Huh?"</p><p>"You asked if I was there to kill you." Din clarifies.</p><p>"I don't remember that." It seems there were large chunks of last night that he'd lost into the black nauseous hole of pain and restless sleep. The thought isn’t a comfortable one.</p><p>"I figured." Din says.</p><p>"Knowing you've already seen me, it makes it easier, to..." Din flounders, his face twisting and he looks like an akk dog trying to understand a magic trick. It would be funnier if Migs wasn't already so on edge. "Test my limits, I suppose." Din finishes.</p><p>“And do what, practice your Sabacc face?"</p><p>"Something like that."</p><p>"Why are you so different from them?" Migs asks, curious, "other Mandalorians, I mean."</p><p>"My tribe followed one way, and other tribes follow other ways."</p><p>Another vague explanation then.</p><p>"No offense, but you Mandos got <em> a lot </em> of rules." Migs says, and finally starts removing his blasters and moves to take off his heavy coat. A sharp lightning bolt of pain spears through his head, gone almost as fast as it came, but leaving a lingering throb. He winces and digs a knuckle into his temple like he can somehow crush it out. It actually helps a little bit, surprisingly.</p><p>“You ok?” Din asks.</p><p>He's not, not really, wants to say so, but can't seem to make himself admit to anything especially when it was real, or gave something intrinsic away, </p><p>“Thriving, just thriving.” he says instead.</p><p>“<em> No offense </em>, but you don’t look so good.” Din says, and he's leaning in a little too close trying to look at his face and his eyes, and Migs' nerves start crawling, and he's suddenly desperate to not make eye contact. </p><p>He thought the guy would avoid it more, but now it's Migs who can't stand to look at him. Maybe because he's been wearing a helmet most of his life, but Din just doesn't seem to understand how unsettling it is to just stare directly into somebody's fucking eyes like that without blinking. That and the way Din never uses his peripherals, and instead tips his whole face toward whatever he was looking at like some big stupid bird. </p><p>Whatever the source of the uncanny valley effect Din sometimes produced, it really freaked Migs out and made him feel pinned.</p><p>“<em> Full offense </em>, go fuck yourself.” he says, nerves fraying.</p><p>Din's brow furrows and the corners of his mouth turn down in a small frown. "And you're not acting right." He says.</p><p>"Oh yeah? And what great fucking paragon of "right" behaviour am I being measured against?" Migs snaps.</p><p>"One that doesn't have a concussion."</p><p>"Yeah, well, I haven't been acting right for thirty years, why stop now?"</p><p>Din sighs, then holds up a hand, looks at him and his eyes are so dark it was hard to look away. "How many fingers am I holding up?"</p><p>Migs considers this, trying to decide if he should be furious, or concerned that he seems to be all fucked up in ways previously unimagined, "Four. No, wait, three." he says.</p><p>"It's two, hotshot." Din says.</p><p>Migs' lip curls at the nickname, giving into anger was much easier than feeling any fear at the knowledge of his own sorry condition, "Call me hotshot one more time and I'm spitting right into your baby browns."</p><p>“You wanna stay on as crew?” Din asks, and truly, Migs is <em> amazed </em>, practically fucking poleaxed, by the man's willingness to continue taking abuse.</p><p>“Fuck, Mando, you lonely or something? A whole galaxy of friends and I'm the best you could dig up? An asshole like me? God, that's fucking sad.” It was a shitty thing to say, but it was the first thing that came to him and the only discernible reason he could think of why anyone, the Mandalorian especially, would willingly choose to spend time with him. Especially since Migs'd been treating him like shit from day one, guy had to be some kind of masochist.</p><p>Din, still patient somehow, and despite Migs' unrelenting bullshit, <em> somehow </em>, says, “It’s up to you." and pushes a half full canister of water into his hands.</p><p>What else was he going to do? Stay in a hotel until he ran out of credits? Avoid the authorities for the rest of his time on Malastare?</p><p>“All my shit’s here anyway.” he says.</p><p>Din nods, taking that as an answer. </p><p>It was the only answer he could comfortably give.</p><p>"You should go up and sit, I'm almost finished here." Din says, popping a couple of blaster cartridges out and getting them set up for charging.</p><p>"You should… <em> stop </em> fucking, telling me what to do." He says, but he's too worn out to inject any real venom into it, just sips the water that's gone metallic tasting like it's been sitting in the container long enough to start degrading it.</p><p>Migs feels like he keeps asking and asking for things without <em> really </em> asking for them. Maybe demanding them just by consequence of his presence, and Din keeps saying yes to every one of them. He wonders when Din’s goodwill might finally run out and he’ll realize how completely unrewarding it is to do anything for the ex-imperial sharpshooter mercenary piece of shit who can’t ever play nice or shut the fuck up.</p><p>It's not an if, but a when. Migs knows this to be correct on an almost visceral level, in the same way he knows his own name, that his eyes are blue, and that his hair is red, but perhaps wanting to push the inevitability of this wretched, unknowable timeline, he asks anyway:</p><p>"Can we stop somewhere before we leave? Real quick?"</p><p>And Din, the fool, better than most and nice to him for no discernible reason Migs can comprehend says, “Where?” without pause or second thought.</p><p> </p><p>=+=+=+=+=</p><p> </p><p>At some point on their way back to Sorixin, Migs can't really pinpoint when exactly, but he falls asleep again like a newborn baby being lulled to dreamland by a repulsorcraft ride, and he dreams —because of fucking course he does—about all his teeth falling out, bloody misshapen pearls tumbling out into his hands, and he drops them all by accident, like maybe they're too slick and slimy or his hands just aren't working right, or they're somehow too intangible to hold onto. </p><p>He's digging frantically through the ash at his feet, like if he can find them somehow, the teeth, or someone or something else that's very important, everything would be ok. His hands are dusty grey, like a corpse's hands, and he digs, uncovers a familiar wide eyed face, mouth full of ash and frozen in a scream. </p><p>He jerks awake with a gasp, and Din’s helmet is back on again and angled toward him, staring at him, and Migs is panting like he's just run half a klick, hand clutching at his heart like he's pretty sure is gonna beat its way out of his ribcage.</p><p>“<em> What </em>?!” he manages to wheeze at him, unnerved. </p><p>A holomessage is playing on the console, and it looks like a frog is talking in some kind of croaking language that he can't understand, showing off a collection of smaller frog creatures that look like they could be children.</p><p>"What the fuck am I looking at?" Migs asks, wondering if he's still dreaming, or the brain damage from his head injury is finally manifesting.</p><p>"Oh. She's a friend." Din says, as if that's enough.</p><p>It doesn't explain a single kriffing thing, but Migs decides he just doesn't even want to fucking know and closes his eyes again.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Tumble in the Rough</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sorry for the delay, a Meaty Slurry of various life events happened to me over the last 2 months. I rewrote this at least twice, then decided to split the chap in half or it would have taken me too long to finish and it's STILL over 10k. I'm long winded I guess.</p><p>Friendly reminder that I have no beta reader and do this not only for free, but for my own personal enjoyment, and I usually write large amounts while drinking and tearfully watching Queer Eye, once while VERY hungover, but mostly on my phone like an animal while pretending to do my desk job.</p><p>Thank you to ghost_teeth for being very patient with my unhinged ranting, lmao. :))))</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>Din thumbed on the flickering readout on his HUD screen. He scrolled past the weather, star maps, the local newsfeed and holonet that he almost never looked at, then cycled through the options that keyed into and displayed the vital details of any nearby lifeform. Migs' eyes are closed, but the HUD readings tell him that he isn’t asleep. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Body temp seemed to read a slightly elevated ninety nine, but was otherwise normal for humans, heart beat normal, but too fast for resting. Breathing not deep or even enough to indicate sleep. Something like a trandoshan would have a resting heart rate of ten beats per minute. A wookie, a closer seventy or ninety. Humans were familiar territory.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs' left knee, bouncing freely, and his fingers mindlessly picking at the edge of the plastocast covering his arm would have told Din as much even without the helmet’s assistance, but the readouts were comforting in their plain certainty, when there was now so little to be certain of, and too many painful truths.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was one of his helmet's more useful features. He'd used it frequently when Grogu was with him. When he wasn't sure if he could properly care for a child, he could rely on the readings to fill in some of the blanks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din remembers the comfort of lying in the berth on </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Razor Crest</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The little hammock made of rigging tarp and a soft blue flannel he'd kept from Sorgan. Hanging quiet above him, swaying gently in the dark. The meter would read back what he'd eventually determined was normal for… whatever the child was, and Din would sleep soundly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din glances at the holomessage indicator light for perhaps the third or fourth time in the duration of this flight. It is stubbornly dark. He will not let this bother him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever Migs had dreamt about had rattled him, but Din hadn’t needed the HUD to tell him that either. He also knew better than to pry, doubting the sharpshooter would be receptive to such inquiries. Everyone had something that kept them up now and then, and if even a fraction of what he’d heard about Operation: Cinder had been true, Migs might’ve had a bit more than most.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was almost like a game, knowing when to help and when not to, only learning the rules after breaking them. This wasn't how he normally operated, but his old way had hardly done him any favors.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lately, Din had experienced a few black dreams of his own. Most involved the main source of his recent pains, the Darksaber. In all the dreams (because they were all the same) the unnatural blade cleaved through a Beskar helm like it was paper, and he’d see his own dark, startled eyes staring back at him, the horrible light of the blade reflected in them, and pulling him in as inescapably as a dying star caught in the slow drag of a black hole.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This might mean something, but he’d never placed much stock in the mysteries of dreams. Cruel games played by the mind were to be endured, then subsequently forgotten.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The night before last, after he had installed Migs in the spare berth, half conscious and reeking of vomit and other medical detritus, yet somehow still demanding Din not touch any of his possessions after deliberately asking him to retrieve aforementioned possessions for him. Din had stood there in the empty ship’s hull for a moment, idly watching the small droid he’d already decided to tolerate, wedge itself fearfully in the dark space between a storage shelf and the carbonite racks, quickly living up to its smaller rodent namesake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was in this ensuing quiet that something, an itch or a thought. A feeling maybe, had risen up inside him like ancient dust disturbed, pulling somewhere in his shins and his knees and compelling him to lurch unbidden toward the wall behind which he knew the laser blade had been hidden. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That same strange, unknowable feeling had made him turn on his HUD’s infrared, perhaps in a bid to prove to himself then and there that the blade indeed had no life of its own. It was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> here, not "here" in the same sense that any living thing could be. Not here, clawing and moving in the dark and narrow carbon-caked spaces between the walls of his ship. Like something small and fast-hearted that had inexplicably burrowed in and couldn't find its way back out again, seeking instead to entrench itself and breed. A rodent of a different kind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he’d thought— hoped —there was no phantom heat. Only the cold purple-blue of a metal ship concealing a dead forgotten object. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Standing there blinking in the dark among the green and amber lights, Din had felt foolish, even a little ashamed of his fear. The blade should have held no greater significance than any other salvaged weapon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had broken his creed, not just once but several times now. He'd come to terms with what that meant and had begun to adapt accordingly. Yet Bo-Katan did not seem to find his social condition to be any significant obstacle to the throne of Mandalore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Boba Fett didn't seem to care one way or the other, more amused by the whole situation than anything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There could be some comparison made between the first two times he’d removed his helmet; a room full of enemies and one ally, then a room full of allies and one enemy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was something significant to be gleaned from these two events, surely. Something the Armorer would have easily broken down and reforged into a shape he could have recognized. She probably could have explained the dreams to him as well. Reading him as easily as the leaves in his tea, or the flame marks on newly forged Beskar.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Beskar speaks its stories to me, Din Djarin. I am merely its translator.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>What would she think of him now? Din wondered, and not for the first time. Would she listen if he explained it to her? Would she— </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span> she understand? Had she known about the ways of other Mandalorians and had she kept that from him?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He might never know, and at times like this, Din ached for her council, her quiet steadiness. As solid and immovable as any mountain. He would have to deal with these looming unknowable things without her, as he had been for some time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dar'manda… Mand'alor…. was it possible to be both and neither? This should mean something. It </span>
  <em>
    <span>must</span>
  </em>
  <span> mean something, but maybe it means nothing at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For now there was a job to finish, and a new crew member. Things seemed to work out best when he stuck to what he knew. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We're landing." Din says, and Migs opens his eyes, sitting up and looking around.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Mudhorn</span>
  </em>
  <span> lands hard and graceless, the impact sending a rattling pulse up the steering column and making his elbows ache. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Migs says, breathless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din nods absently. The power feeds to the landing gear weren’t in the best condition, and the shock absorbers probably weren’t optimal either. Not his best landing, no, but far, </span>
  <em>
    <span>far</span>
  </em>
  <span> from his worst. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I could throw a camtono full of lead off a building and it'd land softer than this fucking thing." Migs says scathingly, and Din observes his bitten down fingernails digging sharply into the armrests like a squirrel clutching for purchase at the bark of a tree.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What'd you pay for this antique piece of shit anyway? If it was anything over seventy thousand creds you got ripped off big time." Migs words are no doubt meant to be cutting, but there's no real bite to them. Din glances at him then, and notes he has the bright, glassy-eyed look of someone who's been awake for too long. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s off-grid.” Din says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs lifts his eyebrows, skeptical, “Imp and New?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yep.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” Migs sucks at his teeth, considering, “still garbage though."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It could use some work." Din says carefully, "if you're interested."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs looks at him out of the corner of his eye, "These days I’m barely giving a fuck away. Just because I agreed to stay on as crew doesn't mean I'm gonna crawl around in this coaxium propelled scrap heap, fixing shit for </span>
  <em>
    <span>free</span>
  </em>
  <span>." Migs says irritably, "my time is fucking valuable."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't expect you to."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You treat all your crew this way?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re only the second person I’ve asked.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah? The first guy die or something?” at this he gives a humorless laugh, “I’m touched, Mando, truly, really makes a guy feel special, and hey, glad shooting a guy in the head doesn't mean I blew the interview.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can call me Din, or Djarin if you like. But keep it Mando if we’re out in public.” Din says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You already know my new stupid-ass chain name, so ‘Migs’ should probably stay just between us girls.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine.” Migs echoes, then releases a shaky breath that turns into another aborted laugh, "While we're on the subject of particulars, I'm </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> particular about my shit and my personal space.” he says, then frowns a moment, considering, “and I don't know if you've picked up on this yet, but I'm kinda an asshole."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din nods thoughtfully, as though digesting new information, "The work's dangerous, and the pay's inconsistent." he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs snorts, "Thanks for the tip, I fucking know how bounty hunting works, I just don't wanna be some guy covered in engine grease rolling around in the back, waiting to be told what to shoot at, I'm sick of that kark." he says, "This better be a fifty-fifty kind of gig."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I thought it was Mandalorians that had a lot of rules."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't be smart, I'm just tired of getting fucked over." Migs grumbles insistently, “terms and conditions to be retroactively updated pending any further concerns, got it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Alright." Din said, and held out his hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs just looks at his hand like it’s a particularly gruesome spider, then back at his visor, "We gonna be shaking hands every time we pass each other on the way to piss?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Makes it official."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs hesitates only a moment before grasping his hand in a quick shake, “Okay,” he says and pulls a deep breath through his nose before releasing it out his mouth, then takes another, eyes darting around the console readouts. "Okay," he says again, then seems to finally, really relax for the first time since they'd first run into each other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Here's a first time freebie then, totally on the house," Migs says unprompted, "don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that number there that says twenty eight percent?” he says, pointing helpfully at the Hypderdrive meter, “definitely supposed to say a hundred."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yup.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m saying the motivator’s probably wicked kriffed up.” Migs says, with an extrapolating swirl of his hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Thanks for the tip." Din echoes.</span>
</p><p><span>Migs glares at him a little, "Okay, I see that our standards for what constitutes 'good working order' are already a little at odds.” he says, sounding irritated, “You know, and I’m just saying,” he holds out his hands and shrugs, shaking his head, “speaking for me personally, I care if a ship can actually fucking</span> <span>fly.”</span></p><p>
  <span>“That’s why I hired you,” Din says, “your high standards.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs stares at him, face lined with clear annoyance, “Don’t make shit up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“More fun that way.” Din says, tilting his head, amused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs just stares at him, eyebrows lifting, “Is that right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mmhm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, you’re a real fun guy, and I'm sure we'll have even more fun hooking up an OBD meter to this barely flying trashcan." Migs says flatly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din hums at that, then, "we should probably head out before someone notices we're illegally parked."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Trust me, everybody's watching the race, nobody's gonna give a shit." Migs says, then asks "...Do I look all fucked up?" in an odd tone, directing a circular gesture to his own face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din looks. Migs has dried blood under his nose, on his mouth and chin drying dark red and brown making the lightness of his skin show even lighter, and it stained both sleeves of his coat. His bloodshot eye and bruised up head, while much improved, still made for an unnerving appearance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"...Yeah." Din says eventually.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Never hear the end of it if I show up looking beat." Migs says quietly nodding, and scrubs his stained sleeve under his bloody nose again a little harder than was probably necessary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I know I’m not your first choice for a live-in mechanic." Migs says knowingly. He's grinning, but it's lopsided and he sounds uncharacteristically subdued, "Obviously you didn't come here expecting to find my stupid, crusty ass."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I don't usually plan these things." Din says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Just how the wookie cookie crumbles, huh?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"This is the way." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din gets an eye roll for that, "Yeah? Is it? Real deep." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So far, so good.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>=+=+=+=+=+=</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Outside it's snowing again, dense, fat flakes that fall soft as flower petals and accumulate quickly. Din can hear revving speeder engines and the dull roar of cheers from somewhere east of them drifting into the narrow alleyway. It seems the untimely death of one of its more popular participants did not slow the proceedings of the winter night race in the slightest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"It'll just take a second, just gonna pay her for the unit, say buh-bye, and we can get the kark outta here." Migs says, shivering in his coat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take your time.” Din says. It wasn't like the bounty was going anywhere, and Fett was generous with the schedule.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs’ face, now cleaner, scowls uncomfortably at the closed door of the more upscale looking unit. Din hangs back away from the door while Migs, unsure if his presence would only make things more uncomfortable. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a cry of surprise like a sea bird taking off, from the Dug woman that answers the door, presumably the landlady Jaana. She was dressed in a pink bathrobe, one of her hand-feet clutching the robe to hold it closed against the cold, the other gesticulating emphatically. There were two simple gold hoop earrings in each of her small, fin shaped ears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her exclamation of “Hist!” was easy enough to understand, but the rest of her words were a little too quick, and Din was standing just far enough away, to not catch everything, but she seemed to be asking about what had happened to the unit, and if Migs was alright.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn't exactly fluent in Dug, but Migs was passable enough to make himself understood, and he glossed over an explanation of what had happened, lying easily.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just an accident,” Migs says, cutting back into basic, “Slipped on the ice, landed on my fuc- on my steps, I’m totally fine!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You say it, but I not believe it,” she answers back in basic, accent thick. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs fishes out the bag of credits he'd stolen off of Keba's corpse and gives it to her, asking if it was enough to cover the damage. She accepts it happily, and it's only then that she notices Din for the first time. Her lavender eyes widen a little and she seems to shrink back into the doorway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The whispered word of “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Mandalorian</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” is as plain as day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh! Yeah, Mando’s uh, a-a friend,” Migs says smiling, waving him over, “we’re doing a job together, and, uh, it’s gonna take me off-world for a little while.”Din nods at her as he approaches, and Jaana seems to relax a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Through the opened doorway, Din can see a quaint living space with pink plush furniture made perfect for the Dug woman’s size. Several tooka cats watch them warily from a couch the colour of beach roses, their small eyes glinting green and gold in the low light. Behind the couch there was a backlit glass curio cabinet of sorts, absolutely filled, floor to ceiling, in small colorful cat figurines made of various materia.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the corner of what Din assumes is the living room, a little television set has the night race playing, and a news ticker was running at the bottom of the screen, detailing the murder of one of the racers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They probably shouldn't linger planetside for too much longer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaana attempts to invite them in for tea, but Migs informs her they can't stay, citing a schedule they have to keep to. Jaana says something to the effect of '</span>
  <em>
    <span>I have something for you</span>
  </em>
  <span>,' and disappears back inside her eclectic unit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"She's nice." Din observes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, but why does she have to…?" Migs waves his hand in a vaguely exasperated manner at the warmly glowing rectangle of the open doorway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"She likes you." Din offers. It's the only thing that makes sense. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Guess that's her problem.” Migs says, and Din thinks he might be embarrassed, but the flush could also be from the cold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tooka cats begin to edge out curiously from the mouth of the doorway, as cautious as deer entering a forest clearing. They soon wind around Migs' legs like fast creeping vines, chirping and meowing in greeting as he bends to pet them. They seem to recognize him from a previous meeting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din sees something soft, unusual and almost boyish lighting up in the former imp's face at the sight of them. It was familiar but bittersweet, like recognizing someone you knew from a long time ago, but hadn't seen or spoken to in even longer. Or recalling a treasured memory of brighter days when things were better, easier, </span>
  <em>
    <span>happier</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>—Din </span>
  <em>
    <span>feels</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Sure likes her cats though." Migs says, and the cats arch their backs up to meet his fingers, some balancing on their hind legs to headbutt his hands in delight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"And the color pink." Din observes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs glances at him then, “Uh, yeah, hundred fucking percent on that," he sighs, "I fix her heater </span>
  <em>
    <span>one </span>
  </em>
  <span>time</span>
  <em>
    <span>,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and I can’t escape.” he says. The tooka cats leave bird-footed prints in the freshly fallen snow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is the snow cold on your little feet?” Migs asks the nearest cat, then carefully picks it up. "Is that better?" he asks, and it sits a moment, allowing itself to be held and petted, its chicken-like talons curling firmly around his wrist. Before long it starts to squirm and mewl in displeasure, its large mouth spreading open like a wide, toothy cavern. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck, </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Migs huffs as it wriggles free of his grip to land back on the ground, disappointment clear on his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaana appears again a moment later, shooing the tooka back into the unit, then she holds out a small cobalt blue figurine. It was another tooka cat, and it seemed to match the look of the others in her displayed collection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, you don’t gotta—” Migs starts once he sees it, but she cuts him off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You say you always want one.” She says, and holds the figurine out to him insistently. Migs’ face twists into an expression Din can't quite identify, and he nods, mumbling thanks before tucking the small figurine into a pocket.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Take care yourself.” She says, and Migs startles when she abruptly holds his face and kisses his forehead. He seemed both stunned and cowed by the kind gesture. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I call you, I call you and check on you.” Jaana promises, then they say goodbye.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Friend</span>
  </em>
  <span>, huh?" Din says while they're walking back to the ship.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't flatter yourself." Migs snaps at him, and Din thinks it might've been the wrong time to tease.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Maybe I should have stayed behind on the ship, there probably aren't too many other Mandalorians planetside where a murder took place." Din says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure if questioned, Suumala will point out that Keba </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span> try to have me fucking murdered over something real stupid, and that you showed up and saved my dumb ass.” Migs says offhandedly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Suumala?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cantina bartender. The twi’lek lady.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah,” Din remembered her, “think that’s enough?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enough for what? To cover our asses?” Migs asks, annoyed. It seemed he was often annoyed. “Listen, nobody loved this guy enough to put a bounty or something out for his killer, </span>
  <em>
    <span>believe</span>
  </em>
  <span> me. If anything, I did everybody a big fucking solid putting one between his eyes. Guy’s always been a kriffing prick.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hope you’re right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I </span>
  <em>
    <span>am</span>
  </em>
  <span> right, and if not then whatever, we're not fucking coming back here anyway." Migs says with such finality that Din doesn't argue. The rest of their walk back is quiet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They board the ship, buckle up, and clear the planet’s atmosphere without any issue. Again, Migs sits with his eyes closed for their take-off flight, this time with the small droid settled in his lap. He seems uncomfortable, and Din wonders if he’s being bothered by some kind of residual vertigo.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m gonna sleep,” Migs says once they enter open space, sounding halfway there already, “Wake me if there’s a problem.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>=+=+=+=+=+=</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His head aches something fierce and his skull feels like it's been stuffed full of hot cotton. He's too warm, fever hot in that way heavy sleep can make you. It's see-your-breath cold in the ship for some reason, and he'd already pulled the blanket tight over his head to hide from it, but something's shaking. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He's</span>
  </em>
  <span> shaking. Being shaken. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone is shaking him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"There’s a problem," a voice says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the adrenaline hits, potent as barracks perimeter alarms blaring at three am and he's struggling to move, limbs flopping slow and useless like he's swimming through thick molasses. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"The </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>...?" Migs mumbles, trying his best to orient himself to the floor and ceiling. He's still lying down, of that he's pretty sure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't you kriffin' knock?" he's a little irritable maybe, but who wouldn't be?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I did. A few times." It's Din. Migs recognizes him now. He cracks open gummy eyes. The berth door is open and Din is back lit by green and amber lights making it hard to completely discern the shape of him. His voice has a slight edge to it, like maybe he'd been there a while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"...</span>
  <em>
    <span>What?</span>
  </em>
  <span>" Migs mumbles stupidly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"There's a problem." Din repeats, and he must be moving because the blinking amber and green hull lights roll over the helmet's reflective surface making it hard to tell where Din ends and the rest of the ship begins. Before Migs can really get a proper focus on him, Din's receded back into the ship like he's sunk into black water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs thinks he might hate him, but he gets up, because it’s probably important. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His right arm is tingling like he's been stung, nerves waking up slowly like he must've slept on it wrong and that </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span> cast—</span>
  <em>
    <span>need to saw it off</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he makes a mental note—he's not supposed to be awake and he can't find his boots. He tugs his winter coat on just for something warm and heavy to anchor him into the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs stumbles on bare feet, and it's cold. He's not supposed to be awake and he can't remember where he put his blaster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If someone had pressed a blaster to his head and threatened to blow his brains out, he wouldn't have been able to recall how he got from the berth to the cockpit to save his life. Maybe he went there in the usual way, or maybe he clipped his way up through the ceiling like one of those cheaply rendered hologames they always have in cantinas. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ikopi Hunter</span>
  </em>
  <span>, a shooting game, he'd been a fucking pro, and his high score was probably still sitting unbeaten inside the charred remains of that shitty game machine in that obliterated cantina in Ashheap, if there was anything even left of it to recognize at all </span>
  <em>
    <span>after</span>
  </em>
  <span>—). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's groggy as all Hells, but he's starting to come out of the knockout he'd expected (hoped for) when he'd found his last three somaprin pills and a couple of doze tabs he'd squirreled away in his bug-out bag. He’d necked them down dry before curling up in his sad excuse for a borrowed bunk, pulled the blanket over his head, and waited for that heavy wave of sleep to run him down like a light cruiser.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The combo of adrenaline and tranqs was making him feel all screwy, but this was familiar. He could do this. You wake up tired and people are yelling at you to do something, shoot something, and you get up and you do it or there's bad consequences for you, or for everybody. Rinse. Repeat. He’d done it a million times before. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Easy</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s been a little while since he'd last been in space, and Migs makes the mistake of looking out the transparisteel windows at the wheeling stars and he can’t immediately orient himself as to what was up or down. The sudden vertigo makes his gut float briefly like a corked bottle lost at sea. His mouth floods with slimy, hot saliva and </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He thinks he might puke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn't so much as sit in the co-pilot chair as he lets his legs give out so he can collapse into it. He guesses (hopes), that if it comes right down to it, Din </span>
  <em>
    <span>probably</span>
  </em>
  <span> wouldn't kill him if he up and puked on the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"We're being followed." Din says from the pilot's chair, not looking at him. The holodisplays and readouts are currently incomprehensible, and a little hard to look at, but Migs can see that the backcam's projecting an image of two blurry little ships tailing their ass.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span> he's never had it this bad before. Migs sits in the chair, as still as a statue, hoping the nausea will resolve itself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His brain decides it's gonna kick in then and provides him a stream of thoughts relating to the checklists they'd run through before their last takeoff. Typical shit. He’s finally cognizant of all the dash meters, and there’s a lot of blinking red, which was usually a bad thing. He doesn’t remember seeing this much shit in the red when they took-off. How did all this shit break within the span of a few hours? Come to think of it, why the fuck were they even going sublight in the first place?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Why didn't you jump?" Migs asks, voice sounding a little rough to his ears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Turns out the hyperdrive is busted." Din says conversationally.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, is that all?” he hears himself say somewhere ahead of where he thinks his mouth is supposed to be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>These old combustion engine ships, sometimes you couldn't get at what you needed to, some models didn't have an access panel to the main rotor system where it should be. You'd have to either crawl through a womp rat warren of pipes and cables or wait until you were planetside and get a crane to lift the engine out to even reach the drivecore. At least the engines on this particular model had their very own compartments. With all these warning lights, if it came right down to it, Migs could go up to another narrower level between the cockpit and the gunner’s station through a narrow passage that you almost had to crawl through, and the engine compartments would be easily accessible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It seemed the ships got a bit closer, Migs could suddenly see them better now, they were typical bounty hunter ships: a YV triple six, and a pricier IG-2000. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Huh</span>
  </em>
  <span>. These guys probably weren't fucking around.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Those guys probably aren't fucking around," Migs says aloud, then, "the Hell do they want?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know yet.” Djarin says, “They’ve been following at a distance for a little while.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something was rattling somewhere that sounded like it wasn't supposed to be. Migs was cold, he was sweating, his head hurt, he wasn't supposed to be awake, and he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely</span>
  </em>
  <span> gonna puke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No hails?” Migs asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, and mine haven’t been answered.” Din says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Huh..." Migs was trying to listen, really, it sounded real fucking dire, but he also really didn't want to barf all over himself. He spies a small metal wastebasket hooked under the console and if </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> isn't a maker made miracle he doesn't know what is. He pulls it out and holds it in his lap. Din either doesn't notice or doesn't care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The contents of the basket is mostly tissues, and isn't </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>just fucking weird and sad. Migs has got something golden, something real fucking smart to say right on the tip of his tongue that's gonna embarrass this lonely aluminium foiled bastard, but then he abruptly retches into the bin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He coughs and spits, then sits breathing for a moment and sniffs, blinking tears out of his eyes. When he chances a glance at Din, the other is already looking at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You got something to say?" The endorphin rush from heaving his guts up makes him feel better almost immediately, and he tries to go for threatening, but the words come out sounding something closer to strung-out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din tilts his head, “Nope.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"That's what I fucking thought.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Mandalorian. Mandalorian</span>
  </em>
  <span>." There was a voice over the comm that sounded kinda robotic, and maybe Migs was a little paranoid, but it kinda sounded like a bounty droid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din pauses, and tilts his head a little. "…Yeah?"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Deliver us your quarry, the nikto, Noibbyl Choptu and we will cease our pursuit."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Oh, uhh…" Din paused, "Who?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs just stares at him crazily.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There's a pause, then the robotic voice (definitely a droid) repeats the request in that vaguely demanding and somewhat irritating way that all speaking droids seemed to do. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Deliver us your quarry, the nikto, Noibbyl Choptu and we will cease our pursuit."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fucking Hell</span>
  </em>
  <span>, at least Zero'd had somewhat of a sense of humour.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What, he sell their weapons too? How many people has this guy pissed off?" Migs says.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You are also wanted for the murder of pod racer Keba.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span> kidding me?” Migs says, stunned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din ignores him and turns the comm on again. "Yeah, uh, I think you must have the wrong ship."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs reaches over him and thumbs the comm back to mute. "Maker's fucking tits, what is this, amateur hour? The fuck is wrong with you?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m trying to talk our way out of this.” Din says, like it was obvious, like he wasn't actively doing the worst job of it Migs had ever seen in all his forty plus years alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, is that what you’re doing? And here I thought you were pretending to be a fucking moron on purpose cause it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>more fun that way</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Migs says mockingly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re the one who killed the pod racer, not me.” Din points out helpfully. Absolute fucker that he is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah! Cause he tried to fucking kill me and stole all my shit!” Migs hisses, “I call that a justified killing, and the guy was already a fucking criminal, selling shit to a known weapons trafficker, if you recall.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gee thanks asshole, wish I still fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> asleep.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din has the courtesy to tip his head back in Migs' direction, like he's absolutely listening, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely</span>
  </em>
  <span> gives a shit, "You rather I left you sleeping while we got blown up?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Uh, yeah, I would’ve,"Migs said, "then I wouldn't have to watch the 'Mando's the worst negotiator in the fucking galaxy' holoshow' and I could have fucking died in peace." he says in a rush.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Careful Mayfeld." Din says evenly. He hadn’t used his name like that in a little while, not since they’d first been thrown back with eachother in that fucking cantina the other night. Maybe Din is </span>
  <em>
    <span>actually</span>
  </em>
  <span> mad now, but it’s hard to tell honestly, and he's gonna have to work a lot harder than that if he wanted to get on Migs' level, because like </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span> if Migs is gonna be cowed by some shiny metal bitch using his last name like he’s got leverage with some kind of parental-rage-emphasis. Next thing he knew the guy was gonna count to three or get the switch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe he wasn’t currently firing on all cylinders, and maybe he feels tremendously screwed up, but Migs could say with absolute certainty that he'd spent the last couple of days straight-up not having a good time. He wishes he could stop himself from opening his big fucking mouth, wishes he could stop acting like this, but he’s seeing red no matter where he looks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know when you first took your helmet off in that fucking mess hall I thought maybe you were just having a stroke or something, and shitting those borrowed fucking trooper pants in terror at the sight of that skeleton mother fucker, but it turns out you’re really just a scared, makerdamned godawful fucking liar.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Seems like you got it all figured out then hotshot." Din says, and there’s danger there, something real threatening underneath those words like some predator beast lurking in dark water, but it's Migs who's about to come unhinged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grits his teeth, incensed, and acts without thinking. He licks a stripe up the palm of his hand and hits it right into the side of mando's shiny metal bucket with an audible wet slap hard enough to make his hand sting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Go fuck yourself Mandalorian</span>
  </em>
  <span>." he says viciously.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs revels in the full body jump this gets him. Mando tenses up, and for one heart rattling second Migs thinks he's about to hit him. There’s terror in that sure, but maybe a prideful, spiteful, and lunatic part of him that yearns for a thrill of a different kind almost wishes a motherfucker would.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe Din was right, maybe he wasn't acting right because he was too angry right now, maybe too looped out on tranqs or fucked up from a head injury to get even a little scared about what Din might do to him in retaliation. Instead he just wonders how badly he'd destroy his good hand if he punched Mando right in his metal fucking face. Wonders if he even cares.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smashes the unmute button on the comm and all but growls into the microphone, "Fuck around and find out." Then clicks the comm off completely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din just looks at him, and yeah, Migs can't see his face, but he's giving him that look like he thinks Migs has lost his mind. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>, maybe he has, but he's too tired and wound up to care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"There, now you want me in the gunner." Migs says, as sure of himself as he was sure of what was probably gonna happen within the next few minutes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Do I." Din says, and it's more of a statement than a question.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah you do, or were you about to tell me that they don't have to die and that violence isn't the fucking answer?" Migs says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din sighs, aggrieved, "Go then, I'll try to fly us out of here."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"A "please" would be nice." Migs demands crazily. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ship shakes as something strikes it— </span>
  <em>
    <span>assumed location of damage, </span>
  </em>
  <span>something the repair droids would always say on gunships as spots on the ship display would flare up in bloody spots of red after the hits started rolling in,</span>
  <em>
    <span> employ hull mainframe repair concept—</span>
  </em>
  <span>and Din curses again in some weird language Migs doesn't know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Now</span>
  </em>
  <span>." Din says, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>shit</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Migs doesn't need to be asked twice.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>=+=+=+=+=+=</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s back down the ladder and rushing through the hull, nearly tripping over E91 on his way to the gunners station.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't freak the fuck out, just find a corner to hide in okay?" he calls to the droid, hoping he'll actually listen this time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gets to another ladder in the back and has to suddenly hang on with everything he has to avoid being thrown to the floor as the ship suddenly picks up speed and lurches hard to the right. The enormous titanium ball joints that attached the engines to the hull were great for vertical landings and takeoffs, but not as great for keeping the contents of the ship level during moments of abrupt directional change. When he gets a spare fucking second, he's gonna make sure Mando realizes that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ladder goes up, and up, and up until it opens up into the domed compartment of the gunner’s station. Migs shucks his coat off onto the floor, he’s suddenly roasting. He drops into the gunner’s seat, straps in and flips the visor down over his eyes. It’s all very familiar, which is another small mercy, because muscle memory is all he has left at this point, and he hopes it's enough. It </span>
  <em>
    <span>has</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Back in the service, one of the medics he'd run with most often while flying in gunships was a big guy named Dorn Rik. He was crazy, yeah, but all medics were fucking crazy. He had dark eyes and a thick mustache and a funny sort of accent. His big hands were deceptively gentle and he could stitch somebody's guts back in no time flat just as neat as you please. That, and he made Migs laugh like nothing else. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Standing behind him, hand squeezing his shoulder, he would have him in tears with his stupid jokes while they made low, lazy circles over grey landscapes already well pockmarked with cannon fire. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He'd called him all kinds of names too, Hist of course, Hotshot, and was the first person who called him Killshot. That one got around, probably because it had something dumb and threatening sounding like 'kill' in it. They loved that juvenile shit in the Empire for some reason, but they weren't the most creative bunch either. It was the first time Migs had really felt respected, or liked for something he was actually good at. It had felt like something he could maybe be proud of.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>(You're gonna make me miss, man!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You won't miss.)</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Dorn's low altitude assault cruiser had gone down in a fiery explosion in a skirmish somewhere over Naboo before the medic had ever had a chance to set foot on Burnin Konn, leaving behind only smoldering wreckage to be swept up into a garbage hauler, bones and all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Probably best that Dorn had missed out on all that. Migs sometimes wished he'd been so lucky.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dorn would've had something to say about Operation: Cinder probably. Something dark and stupid and fucked up like, </span>
  <em>
    <span>'when I said I wanted the Empire to throw us a barbecue, this isn't what I meant!' </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs had to swallow back a sudden bark of hysterical laughter at the thought, knowing it wasn't funny at all. He's able to reign it back easily once he gets a sobering glimpse of his own reflection in the star-dappled transparisteel dome, grinning like a skull in the dark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Stop that!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Mando’s voice over the comm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop </span>
  <em>
    <span>what</span>
  </em>
  <span>?!” Migs snaps back, “I’m waiting to shoot at these fuckers!” he shouts, gesturing wildly to an enemy he hadn’t spotted yet for the benefit of an audience that couldn’t see him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Not you. Your droid. It's- he's trying to climb the ladder.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” Migs says feeling stupid, “well you can’t yell at him! Only I can yell at him!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>What?</span>
  </em>
  <span>"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Ten o clock!" Migs says as the Y-666 comes into his view portside. He's trying to engage so the whole gunner can swivel and follow the targets like it's fucking supposed to, </span>
  <em>
    <span>but it wouldn't fucking engage.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Shoot them down!</span>
  </em>
  <span>" Din shouts, the speaker crackling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, I'm up here stargazing, the kriff you </span>
  <em>
    <span>think</span>
  </em>
  <span> I'm trying to do?!" Migs barks into the comm. "Everything on this karking piece of shit ship is busted! You should have left me in a fucking snow bank!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ship banks hard to the right to avoid another hit. Migs hasn't spotted the IG-2000 yet, the Triple six seemed to be giving them the most trouble at the moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>What do you need?</span>
  </em>
  <span>"</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I need my head put through a table, this time hard enough to finish the job— </span>
  </em>
  <span>"Gunner won't spin, I have to be facing them." Migs explains.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>I'll see what I can do."</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"You could learn to fly straight for one!" Migs shouts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something slams hard into the side of the ship, shunting them violently to the side. That other ship he hadn't seen must've taken the opportunity to give them a little love tap—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>—and now there's an emergency alarm going off somewhere in the hull. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Great</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs hopes Mando can do the heavy lifting for him, because he can't think straight enough to get clever about shooting these assholes out of the sky.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ship lurches hard again and spins in a 180, and suddenly Migs has the triple six in his sights and doesn't hesitate blowing it to sparkling dust. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Killshot</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It was a much nicer ship than Din's so, yeah, rest in pieces, but also, good fucking riddance and—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Where's the other ship?" Migs asks into the comm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Jumped</span>
  </em>
  <span>." Din says, and Migs sighs with relief, slumping in the seat and starting to undo the straps that had dutifully kept him from greasing in a smear over the dome ceiling.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"What was that about nobody caring enough to put a bounty out for Keba?"</span>
  </em>
  <span> Din had a bit of a tone that Migs decidedly didn't like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Don't even start," Migs says, tired and mad, "Don't even kriffing start."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"</span>
  <em>
    <span>Hm</span>
  </em>
  <span>."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs is just getting to the point where he thinks the gunner's chair might almost be nice enough to sleep in before the emergency lights come on and there’s an alarm blaring somewhere, no, </span>
  <em>
    <span>everywhere</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Shitshitshit!”</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Migs is sliding down the ladder faster than he thought himself capable, and squeezing his way through the narrow passage that led to the engine fuel chamber.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It's a hydraulic line, it must be busted, he can hear air blasting out through one of the wall panels, and he's quick to dig his fingers into the handles that unsnap the panel from the wall. Breathing hurts. Every breath is stabbing at the back of his throat like a knife, making his jaw ache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's reaching in through a veritable jungle of loose wires that are tangled into each other like kudzu vines and sparking dangerously. He's clumsier using just his left hand, but he's trying to get at the nest of thicker hydraulic lines to stop the leak, and he'll be lucky to do so in a timely manner. Even luckier if his arm hair doesn't catch on fire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Think you found it?” Din says from somewhere behind him, nearly scaring him into an early grave. Migs hates how calm he sounds when he’s pretty sure his own fucking heart might just explode.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Busted hose clamp, rip in the hydraulic line, it's dumping air pressure." he says, gasping. “If it loses too much air it won’t be able to suck enough fuel to do fuckall.” Migs says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s feeling for the blast of air leaking out of the enormous snake-like tube, finding it, he closes his sweaty hand around the massive artery of the air tube to stop the bleed, then sits there panting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’d be floating here until someone found us.” Din answers calmly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes Migs a long and infuriating moment to realize that with his hand holding the rip in the line closed, he can't exactly get up to do anything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Wow, hey, that sounds fun as fuck." he deadpans.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Or the life support gives out and we suffocate."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs grits his teeth. "Hey, can you come a little closer so I can hit you again?" he asks in what he hopes is a conversational tone, and not something edging too close to unhinged, "since I'm a little tied up here holding our </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking</span>
  </em>
  <span> lives together."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din huffs a sound that sounds suspiciously like a laugh, and Migs thinks that if he didn't very much want to live, he would get up, and tear that bucket off his big Mando shoulders, taking his head right along with it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Seems like you're doing fine."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, I will be if you get me another fucking hose clamp!” Migs says, and he's not yelling </span>
  <em>
    <span>exactly</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but he is angry and he hopes that he's successfully communicated that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Okay." Din says, and wanders away presumably to look, and it's nice to be listened to for fucking once in his miserable fucking life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And some kriffin’ hose tape!” Migs calls after him. “And a snack!” he adds, emboldened. He's suddenly exhausted, "and a stiff fucking drink," he mutters mostly to himself, then closes his eyes and focuses on breathing in and out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels the familiar pressure at the bottom of the exhale in his throat and belly. Just performing the exercise in itself is calming, something he'd done hundreds, no, thousands of times before. The trick is you’re not supposed to think about how fast your heart’s beating, or the end of the rifle that you’re supposed to keep still, bouncing along to the beat, or the mark you absolutely </span>
  <em>
    <span>cannot</span>
  </em>
  <span> miss. You're not supposed to think about any of that kark. All you have to think about is breathing. After a few moments, his racing heart starts to slow down all on its own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His right arm aches from wrist to elbow where he's using it to brace himself upright to reach inside the hydraulics compartment, and he's so sweaty the plastocast is starting to itch. He's maybe gripping the hydraulic line tighter than is strictly necessary, left hand starting to get cold as the sweat dried. His stomach is starting to curl in on itself as the adrenaline fades. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something bumps gently into his foot and he yelps in surprise. It's E91.  “Oh, hey,” he says tiredly, "you scared the shit out of me." getting a pleased brrrr for his efforts, then,"...How the fuck did you get up here? Mando bring you?" another series of clicks and trills, "yeah, nice of him."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His head feels like a ball of lead and his eyes feel like they're carved out of wood and affixed into his skull like the unpolished, crudely carved eyes of a child's puppet. Unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth keys him in on the fact that his mouth is dry like he's been eating sawdust for hours and hours. He also thinks he maybe might puke again.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Huh</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"...Hey, I think I'm dehydrated!" he says aloud to nobody in the empty fuel chamber, hoping he doesn't sound as freaked out as he feels. Maybe he hears a grunt of acknowledgement from somewhere in the ass end of the ship, or maybe not, or maybe he's just become the kind of person that hears shit that isn't there now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>E91 beeps helpfully.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>=+=+=+=+=+=</span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, Mando does come back with water, a hydration pack, and a ration bar, among the other requested items.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Slow." Mando says, handing him the canteen of water he'd poured the hydro pack into, like Migs is some kind of idiot. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Thanks, this isn't my first time being all fucked up." he snaps. Sure, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants</span>
  </em>
  <span> to rocket the entire contents of the canteen down his gullet in three massive swallows like a pretty girl's first time at the cantina, </span>
  <em>
    <span>but </span>
  </em>
  <span>he knows what'll happen if he does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a few minutes he's starting to feel better, like vomiting or dying of a heart attack might be something that won't happen to him immediately, or at least not tonight. He gets most of the bottle down and about half the ration bar while Mando shucks off his helmet and both pauldrons to fit himself into the opening to take his turn keeping air in the busted line. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din's dark eyes watch him carefully while he picks at the ration bar, making Migs feel a bit like an animal in a Coruscant zoo.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another minute ticks by, maybe five and Migs feels like he might actually be able to think his way through this, gone now to the place where he can switch the panic off and accomplish an emergency task.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They take turns holding the air in on the hydraulic line, nestled shoulder to shoulder in the narrow opening like a couple of mice checking the air for danger at the mouth of a burrow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Migs pointedly does not dwell on how Din feels, settled against his side in a solid line that's very, very warm, even through the beskar. Migs is cold again, and it feels good. Or how Din's hands look, bare and strong, curling tight around the thick black snake of the bleeding hydraulic line.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs gets a bunch of industrial tape wrapped around the majority of the blown out line to realign it and stabilize the air pressure before he gets the clamp around it. He has to be careful with this bit, because if he busts it again or opened the hole up any wider, they might not be able to repair it and then they'd be well and truly fucked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>E91 drifts back and forth from corner to corner. Unable to offer any real assistance, he's vacuuming the dust out of all the corners. Good enough. If anything he's good moral support.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the end there were two leaks, the huge one he'd found first, and a smaller, less frightening one they'd discovered partway through repairing the first. He used a good clamp for the hard to reach spot, and a shitty clamp for the easy to get at spot as he knew the cheap core world clamp would fail sooner rather than later, and he wanted it to be quickly accessible when it did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs was good at improvising, but the clamps and tape would probably only last about as long as a newly hatched porg making a mad dash for the ocean, but hopefully it'd be long enough to get them to the nearest spaceport to get them replaced. It'd at least prevent them from dying in space probably. Maybe. The adrenaline crash was starting to weigh on him so he was kinda hitting that wall where he didn't really care much one way or the other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The whole job of bandaging takes about two hours from start to finish, between all the taping and the clamps and Din going back and forth to work a manual pump to try to get more air pressure in. Din knew quite a lot, and despite their earlier head-butting, was surprisingly easy to work with. He was calm and incredibly patient with each task, attacking them methodically and precisely. If Migs was being honest, the guy was probably the ideal assistant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It made things much easier when you didn't have to fight your helper at every turn or explain too much. Migs doesn't think he currently has the capacity to explain how to turn a lightswitch on, let alone the ship's hydraulic fuel line system.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Think we'll be okay?" Din says once they've finished up, sounding like he was further away then he really was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was unexpectedly </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Din asking his opinion like that. It was nice to feel respected for once. He was far too used to arguing with people about what he was doing, or how much it costs, or if it was worth doing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, "Hull integrity’s in the red, but we should be able to limp it, and if the hyperdrive wasn't already busted it would be now, but you know, whatever." Migs says tiredly, E91 sitting in his lap now, "as long as no more fucking bounty hunters show up looking for gun-stealer-guy or yours truly, we'll be all set."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was some good shooting, and quick thinking.” Din says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good for something I guess.” Migs shrugs, he never could take a compliment. His right ass cheek is asleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You good?" Din asks. Probably because Migs is still sitting and hasn't yet made a move to extract himself from the mouth of the opened up compartment. Migs is thinking Din's nose is a bit big and beaky, but in a nice way that suits his face, like a hawk's beak. It's probably his best feature, right up there with his eyes. His eyelashes are thick and dark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah." Migs hears himself say, "yeah, I'm good." He's cold, sweaty, sticky, shaky and overall feels like something somebody scraped off the bottom of a boot. The air smells like burning plastic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"What's in those meds you take?" Din asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs, caught off guard, very nearly tells him, but catches himself before he runs his mouth, "None of your business, that's what's in them." he says distantly, "I'm all out anyway." </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Good." Din says, and Migs doesn't know what he means by that, but Din reaches out his hand and Migs takes it without really thinking. Din's hands are very warm and broad, and they're gentle, and don't squeeze too tight. Migs lets himself be hauled to his feet, and he doesn't immediately want to let go, but the decision is made for him once he's upright.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At this point he's just grateful his blood pressure didn't tank and dump him out on the floor. That would've been fucking embarrassing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Umgul is the next closest world I think. The hull should hold unless we burn up in the atmosphere on re-entry.” Din says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs just stares at him, a cold, awful feeling settling into his empty gut. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I'm kidding." Din says, face unchanging.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Wow. Hilarious. You should do stand-up, bet you'd be a fucking hit." Even if it was funny, which it most certainly was fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Migs doesn't think he could laugh anyway. In fact, he’ll probably never laugh again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"You should go back to bed, you're tired.” he hears Din say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs does laugh then, despite everything, maybe it sounds a little too high and too loud for the confined space but— "</span>
  <em>
    <span>You’re tired</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he mimics, “now </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> is funny." He's so tired he could sleep out on a tarmac covered in broken glass. He's so tired he thinks he might rust into the wall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"I'll wake you if we start to lose hull integrity." Din says, following him as he's heading toward the ladder, E91 back under his arm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, don't bother." He almost loses his balance but catches himself, "I'd rather get sucked out into space. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hey!</span>
  </em>
  <span> Maybe I'll find the airlock button and just show myself out." he remarks brightly with a terrible little smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hopes it'll happen. Really. He hopes he falls down the ladder head first. He wishes the houk in the cantina had just gone and stepped on his head after putting it through a glass table. Wish he'd just fucking crushed it like an old tomato.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>=+=+=+=+=+=</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After, Migs stands raw eyed and dead limbed in the cramped 'fresher's sonic, letting the vibrations squeegee the fear-sweat off his body. There’s barely enough room to turn around in here, and Migs wonders how Din can even fit his broad shoulders in through the swivel door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s starting to think now, that maybe this had all been a bad idea. Agreeing to this. This weird, barely-defined </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> (a job? a place to live? a partner?) that he’d found himself agreeing to. That maybe he’d fucked up again. Another fuck-up in a long, relentlessly tethering line of fuck-ups.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's still halfway convinced he's some kind of sad charity case for some sadder motherfucker with empty nest syndrome.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks about how his face has been touched more times in the past two days than it has in the past two years, and how he can't seem to escape being admonished for </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks about that disease he'd read about on the holonet where you can't sleep for some obscene length of time like six or seven months, and then you go crazy and die. He wonders if he has that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe he’ll just lie in bed, he thinks. Maybe he’ll watch his shitty medcenter holo trash drama until his brain cooks molten and pours out his ears, overflowing in the crucible of his skull.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs does exactly that for a little while, he finds E91 again and takes him to bed and collapses there. His blanket is pulled up over his head to block the light of the holovid which sort of hurts to look at, but listening to it is almost as good as watching. The barely audible sound of familiar voices, rising and falling like a swelling tide. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He falls asleep without meaning to, curled into a crescent around E91, head pillowed on one arm, the other dangling loose over the edge of the bunk. The droid's projector is still running quiet and forgotten, the door to the berth left wide open.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>=+=+=+=+=+=</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Din hears the sobbing before he's fully awake, lost in some dream of a different time, in a different ship with a different passenger, and he's stumbling up out of the pilot’s chair he’d fallen asleep in when it all hits him, and there's a crunch when the dome of his helmet connects briefly with something delicate protruding from the ceiling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He's still dreaming in a way, thinking the kid has hurt himself somehow, gotten out of his hammock and fallen, or gotten into something—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>—then he remembers and he's awake again, and that brings its own pain, along with a new concern.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nearly trips over another bundle of wires, spilling out of one of the broken out wall panels like the multicolored innards in the slit open belly of an animal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It's dark, and a pained voice echoes off the metal eerily. Din rushes to the small berth where Migs is supposed to be sleeping, but comes to a stop in front of the open door, the little droid trilling on the floor of the berth and thumping into the edge of the bunk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din thinks Migs is going to sling some curse at him, maybe say he's accidentally gutted himself on some protruded piece of twisted metal and needs to have something important stitched back together as soon as possible, but he doesn't say a word. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs wasn't bleeding or hurt in any way that Din could see, he was asleep. He was just asleep and crying like he was being slowly pulled apart. Din cycled to the heart meter and watched it creep up from one seventy, barreling steadily toward two hundred.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just a dream then, but a bad one. The kind that Din tried to snuff out with bounties and long cold nights on unfamiliar worlds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At first, he isn't immediately sure of what to do. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs could startle, put his hands on a blaster and try to blow Din's head off. A blaster bolt might glance off his helmet, but he didn't trust that Migs would miss all of his softer places at such close range. He might be angry at Din, or humiliated. He might even panic. Din could potentially make this much worse than it needed to be—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>—Migs groans again from where he's twisted up in his blanket, a pained </span>
  <em>
    <span>"I can't... I can't, I can't..."</span>
  </em>
  <span> falling out of him like something had gone in and cut his heart right out of his chest, and Din thinks that any potential alternative has to be better than whatever real or imagined play of misery he was currently trapped in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din takes his helmet off and sets it on the floor. He was more conscious now of how he was perceived by others. Maybe it wouldn't help, but it might, and he was willing to take that chance. Hoping to stay far out of range of whatever the sharpshooter might do, Din grabs a cold bare ankle and shakes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Migs surfaces like a drowning man, jerking upright with a loud gasp. He's scrabbling briefly at the metal wall behind him like a rat trying to claw its way out through a sewer that was slowly filling with water. He was trembling all over, eyes wilder than Din has ever seen them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Hey, it's okay." Din says hoarsely, then moves towards him slowly. He curls his hand around a forearm as hard as steel and squeezes gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tears smeared over Migs' face, shining in the low light of the berth, his blue eyes reflecting like mirrors. There was something almost childlike about the bewildered misery and terror on his face. He hiccupped once, panting, then looked down at where Din was gripping his forearm like it was a coiled snake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Those terrible blue eyes cleared then and focused on Din in the way a predator animal might hook onto moving prey. His lips peel back over his teeth and anger quickly rips terror to pieces.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Get-" he gasps, "</span>
  <em>
    <span>get out</span>
  </em>
  <span>," and it's with all the danger of a loaded weapon, "just, </span>
  <em>
    <span>get out</span>
  </em>
  <span>." He whispers, chest heaving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din sees for the first time that while his right arm is curled now around the trilling droid, his other arm, the one Din is gripping, his hand is white knuckling around the handle of a blaster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His face is the same as when Din had pinned him to the floor of the prison ship, a hundred lifetimes ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Din releases him immediately and holds his hands up in the universal gesture of </span>
  <em>
    <span>I'm not a threat, please don't shoot me dead. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>"Okay," Din says, "it's okay," and backs slowly out of the berth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door whooshes closed as soon as he's clear of it, nearly peeling the top layer of skin off his nose, and Din stands there dumbly, hands still up, waiting there in the ensuing silence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somewhere in the ship something shifts and creaks. He thinks he can still hear Migs gasping for breath. Din slowly drops his hands and lingers there a minute, unsure of what to do next.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe there wasn't anything he </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span> do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After a minute more, he slinks back to the cockpit and checks his holomessages again. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hey brown eyes, you here to kill me?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>There is nothing new.</span>
</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Listen, I know I said slowburn but I guess we're really taking the fucking scenic route on this, but I promise we'll get there lmao. Thank you for your patience. 👌</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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